


Through Brambles and Thorns

by Maayacola



Category: Gokusen - All Media Types, Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:52:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maayacola/pseuds/Maayacola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was something more than rough edges and tangled breaths, knuckles and hearts equally bruised. Now it's just silence bleeding into the spaces Hayato used to fill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**

_… But at this moment the young fairy stepped forth from behind the tapestry. “Take comfort, your Majesties,” she cried in a loud voice. “Your daughter shall not die. My power, it is true, is not enough to undo all that my aged kinswoman has decreed. The princess will indeed prick her hand with a spindle. But instead of dying she shall merely fall into a profound slumber that will last a hundred years.”_

  
\--Charles Perrault, _The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood_

**

Loneliness has never been a distant stranger to Ryu. Loneliness, instead, was Ryu’s companion during his childhood, pressing in close and curling around him, and almost suffocating him with how tightly it held on, wrapping its arms around his torso and making it hard for him to breathe.

**And then.**

And then there was Hayato, all noises and scrapes and anger and energy, and the loneliness loosened its grip just enough for Ryu to inhale. The air tasted fresh and sweet, like strawberry ice cream in midsummer.

Hayato’s way of filling the silence pulled Ryu close and kept him warm.

Ryu misses Hayato. It’s worse, now that he knows what it feels like to go through every day without choking on the feeling of being completely alone.

Ryu misses Hayato with every step forward, and every step back, and loneliness is holding onto him so tight his bones might break under the pressure.

Life, Ryu thinks, isn’t a fairytale, and sometimes Ryu wonders if there’s any magic left in this world at all.

**

On a cold day in January, Ryu runs into a boy with soft, fluffy hair and a mischievous glint in his eyes that makes the chill melt away, sending warmth all the way down to Ryu’s toes. He’s got a smile that lights up his whole face, a crooked one that stretches chapped lips and draws attention away from dirt smudged cheeks.

His clothes are second-, or maybe third-hand, and his coat doesn’t look warm enough for the weather, and there’s a bit of a shiver visible on the exhale as he breathes, but the boy doesn’t seem to mind the icy wind; not really, anyway.

Ryu notices all these things from his vantage point on the ground, because Ryu has literally run into the other boy, walking too fast with his eyes on the asphalt instead of in front of him. Or maybe the other boy has run into _him_ , laughing and stumbling over filthy shoes with untied laces and limbs that have grown more quickly than expected. He’s joking with his friends, this other boy, as he picks himself up, dusting off threadbare pants that pull up too short at the ankle. 

Ryu’s shoes are new, with laces perfectly tied, and his trousers are hemmed to hang just above the tops of his shoes. His father had surveyed him as they stood at the main entrance this morning, critically scanning for any flaw. Ryu is just a child, but his father has always treated him as if he were a man. _A man always takes pride in his appearance._ That’s what his father always says to him, when Ryu leaves his shirt untucked, or when Ryu’s uniform is wrinkled from hanging it up incorrectly. 

But even though his shoes are new, and his trousers are the perfect length, Ryu doesn’t really have friends, so he doesn’t feel like he’s better than the boy who now leans over him, companions cheerfully bickering, looming, with his face filling Ryu’s vision. There’s a tiny cut under the boy’s right eye, and Ryu wonders where it came from. 

“Sorry,” the other boy says, and that fluffy hair falls into his eyes, and his mouth is almost too big, stretching around the words in unexpected ways. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Yabuki!” Another boy yells, and this boy’s head turns, leaving Ryu staring at a long neck. The hair at the nape is a bit curly. “We gotta get out of here!”

“Right, right!” is the hollered response, and the boy, _Yabuki_ , Ryu thinks, looks back at him. He’s backlit by the bit of sun shining through the thick layer of winter clouds, and his hair is a tangled shadow in Ryu’s vision. 

Ryu feels uncomfortable under his gaze. His expensive coat pulls across his back. He’s getting broader in the shoulders—not by much, but enough to restrict his movement. Enough to make him feel stuffy and hot, even in the winter.

A hand reaches out. “Let me help you up,” Yabuki says, and Ryu licks his lips. The hand is callused, and there’s dirt under the fingernails. Ryu can imagine his own mother’s tiny frown of disapproval. 

It’s not enough to stop him. Something in Yabuki’s wild hair and wild eyes feels like an adventure- one that Ryu’d have to be crazy to pass up.

Ryu’s not crazy. Or maybe, _maybe_ , he’s just crazy enough.

Yabuki’s hand is as warm as his eyes, and Ryu feels a tingle spread from their joined palms and creep up his bicep and into his chest before sinking into his stomach, like the import black tea his mother favors in early fall. It’s… a pleasant feeling. He wonders if a simple touch is supposed to feel like this. Ryu’s not really used to being touched. 

“I’m Hayato,” Yabuki says, and he tosses his hair back, and now Ryu can see that his cheeks are flushed with cold, and that the cut under the eye is maybe two days old, already scabbed and fading to brown. 

“Odagiri,” he replies, and he offers a tentative smile. “I’m Odagiri Ryu.”

“Yabuki!” the friends call again, and Hayato waves at them. They’re further ahead now, but Hayato’s legs are longer than Ryu’s. He’ll be able to catch up to them. 

“Gotta pick up my little brother now,” Hayato says. “Taku worries when I’m late.” 

Ryu has a mother who worries when he’s late, too.

“Right,” Ryu says. “Sorry again.”

“It was probably my fault,” Hayato says. “I really wasn’t looking.” His laugh is too loud, and too rough. It’s nothing like Ryu’s mother’s quiet, unassuming laugh. Ryu has never heard his father laugh, but it probably doesn’t sound like this. It probably wouldn’t make Ryu feel so much like there are bubbles inside of him aching to escape, frothing in his belly and floating up into his chest. “Anyway, catch you around, Ryu.”

“Catch you around,” Ryu echoes, and the boy is gone, bounding off to meet his friends at the corner. When he disappears from sight, Ryu can feel the cold again. He can feel January’s biting wind, and the way frost from the ground still somehow makes itself known through the leather of his shoes. His bag is still on the ground. He’s going to be late to cram school.

He’ll remember that smile, because it feels like a dream, or like the magic that Ryu’s only read about in fairytales. He’ll remember Hayato. 

This is a beginning.

**

“Odagiri- _sensei_ ," Kamiyama says, pressing his palms flat against the teacher's desk, leaning forward a little challengingly. Ryu wants to laugh at him, because he's seen worse. Hell, he's done worse; what passes for insolence among his students just reminds Ryu of junior high school. "I need an extra day for the homework."

Kamiyama's tone doesn't really ask for permission, but Ryu knows how this works, too. Kamiyama's got complicated things going on at home... Ryu doesn't know exactly what, because he's not Yankumi, but he knows enough to nod his head. "Fine with me," he says, and Kamiyama exhales. He needs to graduate. Ryu knows that, and is willing to make allowances so that it happens. 

Soon the classroom is empty, and Ryu is left alone at his desk, elbows digging into the wood as he presses his face into his hands. There's too much starch in his shirt, and it makes it uncomfortable for him to lean very far forward, because there's no give in the collar, so it digs into the skin of his neck. 

School is over though, so he's free to unbutton it, and loosen his tie, too. Hayato would laugh, if he could see him now.

Sometimes it's hard for Ryu to sit in a classroom, day after day, teaching students who remind him so much of the way they all used to be; impudent expressions on their faces and loud laughs that almost mask his own voice as he tries to patiently explain the basics of geometry to a disinterested audience.

Out of the corner of his eye, when he lets his guard down... That's when he sees Hayato, sitting in the back, leaning against his chair with his legs spread wide, bottom lip jutting out with defiance.

Ryu doesn't want to see Hayato there; it ties his stomach into knots each time, and makes his breathing shallow and short, and he loses track of what he's saying for just a moment too long to be normal. 

The students, _his_ students, are used to it. It's only Ryu who never seems to see it coming.

Ryu stands, and his chair screeches across the linoleum as he straightens. He grabs his basket, and tries to make a mental list of the things he needs from the teachers’ office. He wants to get in and get out as soon as possible, because today, for some reason, he feels a little trapped. He presses his hand to his chest, where he can feel the metal of his necklace against his skin. It presses out, uneven, against his palm.

There's also the matter of Shiratori, who doesn't seem to take no for an answer, but that's a different problem entirely, and it's another one he can't dwell on. 

He slides the door open as he presses his basket to his hip with one hand, and slips inside as noiselessly as possible. 

He's lucky. His quiet contemplation time in his empty classroom has given the teachers’ office time to clear out, and only two instructors remain, shuffling things around on their desks.

"Odagiri- _sensei_!" Shiratori squeals, and Ryu winces. 

"Good afternoon," he says quietly, taking his free hand to push his hair out of his face. It's a boring black, and he can imagine Hayato's eyebrow of disapproval... Ryu shakes it off. "And how are you today, _sensei_?" 

"I'd be better if you wanted to go out for drinks," she says with a wink. "I'm free on Thursday."

She's cute, Ryu thinks, distantly. There's not really anything wrong with her, in her pink and beige clothes, her impeccable fashion perfectly on trend and her smile innocent and sweet. There's nothing wrong with her, but there's plenty wrong with Ryu. Ryu’s just pretending he’s civilized, half the time. 

"She's free every day," Uchiyama replies, with a smirk. "She's just trying not to make it too easy for you." Uchiyama’s only a year older than Ryu, and Ryu thinks they might both have been the same sort of delinquents in high school. Uchiyama’s got an air of restrained violence to his movements that Ryu finds strangely comforting. It reminds him of…

"If a girl is free every day, it means she doesn't have any friends," Shiratori says, pouting. "And I have plenty of those." 

"You do realize you were a teacher here when I was still a high school student, right?" Ryu asks rhetorically. "That I'm considerably too young for you to be hitting on, I mean?"

"And what a trouble-maker you were," Shiratori replies. "I was charmed even then by your rugged good looks."

"Rugged," Ryu says. "Right."

"You and your handsome friend--" she starts, but then she claps a hand over her mouth exaggeratedly and looks at him with wide eyes. "Sorry, I forgot. I shouldn't have said anything."

Ryu swallows. "It's fine." He quietly shuffles over to his desk, and unpacks his basket. There's an almost eerie silence, but perhaps it's his imagination. "I'm headed out."

"Have a good evening, Odagiri," Uchiyama says, and Ryu nods, shrugging on his coat and locking his desk drawers.

"I will," Ryu says, digging his gloves out of his pockets. "I've got big plans tonight."

"Ooohhh," Uchiyama teases. "Big plans... Do they involve a lady?"

Shiratori looks put out, which makes Ryu smile a little wryly. "They might," he says. Ryu supposes Yamada, the kind old woman who runs the local grocery, counts as a lady. Ryu's big plans are just getting groceries for the first time in weeks, and cleaning his flat, which he's somehow managed to clutter up despite the fact that he hardly ever uses it for anything besides sleeping. "See you tomorrow," he says, and shoves his gloved hands into his pockets. He's already got his leather bag slung over his right shoulder, and it's a bit heavy-- he's got a lot of math quizzes to grade, and they're weighing it down.

"See ya," Uchiyama says, and Shiratori echoes with a little "bye" that sounds melancholy—and Ryu feels bad, he really does, but the answer will never be yes.

Ryu's had his share of falling in love, and he's not really in a place to do it again. He's not sure his heart can take it. Besides, he’s never fallen out of love, so maybe there’s no space, in any case.

Outside, the wind is brisk. Ryu frowns, because it's colder than he'd expected, like winter is trying to challenge him to a fight. Ryu grits his teeth because he hates losing. 

His phone rings. He sighs, and fumbles around in his bag until he finds it, hunching his shoulders a bit to protect his neck from the chill. It's only a few more blocks from his apartment. Usually he doesn't mind the walk, but Ryu abhors cold weather. Hyuuga jokes sometimes that it's because there's not enough of him, and the cold wouldn't be so bad if he ate more. 

"Hello?" he says into his mobile.

"Ryu!" says the cheerful voice on the other end of the line. "How are you?"

"Freezing," Ryu says, a tiny smile making its way onto his face. "Long time no talk, Take."

Take chuckles. "You could always call me," he teases. "There's no reason you can't take the initiative."

"You know it's not my style," Ryu says, and there's a pause, where Ryu fills in the rest silently. _And seeing you reminds me of him._ Take sighs into the receiver, before he barrels on.

"Are you free tonight? Tsucchi and I were going to go get ramen, and wondered if you wanted to come? Goodness knows if you eat without us to watch you."

"I'm still alive, aren't I?" 

"Barely, last I saw you," Take murmurs, and it's unexpectedly solemn, the teasing slipping from his tone. "Seriously, it's been like a month. Come and meet us."

"Yeah," Ryu says. "I just need to change clothes, and drop off these math quizzes."

"Eww," Take says, and Ryu wants to laugh. "Math."

"My students feel the same way you do," Ryu replies dryly, still walking forward, weaving his way through pedestrian traffic with expertise. There are some high school boys up ahead smoking cigarettes next to their bikes. Two of them are his, but Ryu pretends he doesn't see them, because they aren't really hurting anyone. He'll mention tomorrow in class that he walks home along this route, and give them a stern glare. It'll give him some cred, in case he needs to get them to fall in line later.

Ryu thinks he's getting pretty good at this whole teaching thing.

"So come," Take says, and Ryu can hear him holding his breath. He doesn't want to worry them. 

"Only if you call Hyuuga," Ryu says, and Take releases a relieved giggle.

"It's a deal," Take says. "See you at Kuma's place?"

Kuma's place. Of course.

"Yeah. In an hour."

“Do you even remember how to get there?” Take jokes.

“Shut up,” Ryu replies, and hangs up.

Ryu guesses the grocer will have to wait. 

He drops his mobile into his bag, and reaches into the zipper pocket for his keys, undoing all three locks on his door with ease. He surveys the mess with an exasperated eye. 

"How on Earth am I this messy?" he asks himself, dropping his bag in the _genkan_ and shedding his coat. At least his flat is warm, he thinks, as he sets his gloves on the table just inside the door. 

If Ryu is honest with himself, he doesn't particularly want to go back outside. It's not just the cold, he knows. 

He's known Take almost nine years now, but for the past two, just looking at him makes Ryu want to curl up into a ball and disappear. It's not just Take, it's Hyuuga and Tsucchi too. 

But Ryu makes himself go, because that ache—he wants to feel it. He likes to be reminded that it's all real. That this isn't a nightmare he's going to wake up from in the morning.

It's the same reason he took the job at Kurogin this year. It's like ripping off the bandage every single morning when he walks through the school gates to teach the worst class the school has to offer.

Sometimes, Ryu wants to cling to old memories. 

He fingers his necklace after he strips off his dress shirt, tossing it to the floor. The necklace is cold, too, from the outside air. It lies like ice against his sternum.

A T-shirt and a sweater complete his warmer ensemble, and he spares one last glance for the neglected grading before he's gone, walking down familiar streets that remind him of being five years younger, wearing a black uniform jacket over an old tank shirt, Hayato at his side as they prowled around looking for trouble.

Ryu hasn't patronized the ramen shop for two years, but Kuma's place is the same as it's always been. There's a pretty big after-work crowd, but Take'd clearly saved a table for them right next to the kitchen. Ryu smiles as he sits down, just a tiny one, but Take beams back at him. "Thought it might be warmer back here," Take explains unnecessarily. "We always used to sit here, before."

Before. Yes, Ryu thinks. Hayato was always worried about Ryu, even if it wasn't something he expressed in words. 

Ryu nods tightly, and Take bites his lip.

"Anyway, Hyuuga just called, and he'll be here at eight, when he gets off work, and Tsucchi is-"

"Right here," Tsucchi says, towering over them both. He's carrying three beers in his left arm, the bottles pressed against his chest, and a smaller bottle of sake in his right hand. "Ryu, long time no see."

"I've been busy," Ryu says, though all of them know that Ryu's not that busy. "But I'm here now."

"We aren't going anywhere," Tsucchi says. "So don't disappear."

"I won't," Ryu says. Tsucchi smiles at him, then, and sets the beer loudly on the table.

"Let me help," Kuma says. "Ryu, you still like the beef, right?"

"My favorite," Ryu replies quietly, and Kuma ruffles his hair like Ryu isn't a grown man. "Hey!"

"You looked too serious," Kuma says, nervously grinning. 

"Ryu always looks too serious," Take says, and Ryu frowns at them both, or tries to. But despite his efforts, something like a smile is pulling at Ryu's lips.

"I'm a teacher, now," Ryu says. "I'm supposed to be serious."

"Tell that to Yankumi!" Tsucchi says, ordering a beef ramen for herself.

"I think Yankumi is pretty serious," Take argues. "If a bit..."

"Whimsical?" Ryu finishes, and Kuma laughs. 

“Idealistic,” Tsucchi corrects with a smile. “In a good way.”

"Yankumi's pretty pleased that one of you guys followed in her footsteps."

"Ryu's the only one patient enough," Tsucchi says. "He never really had a taste for trouble we had." Ryu looks down, and tugs anxiously on the sleeves of his sweater, so that they cover most of his hands. His bangs fall into his face, and he lets them hide his expression.

"Take was the least crazy, if you ask me," Ryu demurs, and Kuma laughs.

"Take tried to stop fights, and Ryu just made sure the rest of us didn't get killed," Tsucchi says. "And Hayato and I instigated everything."

"That sounds about right," Ryu says, and he opens a beer as Tsucchi pours sake into tiny glasses and pushes them around the table. 

Ryu takes a gulp of beer and looks around the shop. It fizzes in his mouth and tickles its way down his esophagus as he swallows, surveying the lively customers. A group of students, but not his school. Their uniforms are navy, not black, and the buttons are a dull bronze, and flat. Not like the buttons on their uniforms.

Still, Ryu's memories are hard to beat back. He resists the urge to play with his necklace, leaving it under his shirt.

The ramen, when it comes out, is hot and spicy, and it's soothing in Ryu's belly, like the laughter of Tsucchi and Take on the other side of the table. It's nice, Ryu thinks, to sit here and absorb their warmth.

After all, Ryu is always cold.

"Hey guys, looks like I made it!" Hyuuga's hair is still spiky, but he's wearing a suit. He'd ended up employed at a company, after all, and last time Ryu'd seen him, he'd reported being happy. "Ryu, how are you? You'd think we live in different countries, with how often we see you."

"We did, for a while there," Ryu returns, and Hyuuga smiles, and squeezes onto the bench next to Ryu, dropping his briefcase on the floor underneath the table and leaning forward.

"So pour me a drink," Hyuuga says, and for a moment, there's a ghost sitting to Ryu's left, and Ryu can't breathe.

"To friends," Take says, raising his glass. "To always remembering the good times together."

"To friends," Ryu echoes, and one-shots his sake. It's a harsher burn than he remembers. His left hand sneaks under his sweater and grabs at his necklace, rubbing his finger over the metal that hangs from the chain. 

An hour later, or maybe two, when things have gone a little fuzzy, and Tsucchi is recreating, loudly and obnoxiously, an incident that had occurred at the toy company where he works, that’s when Take, who has switched to Ryu's side of the table, leans a little against Ryu's side. 

"Hey, Ryu," Take slurs. 

"Yeah?" Ryu slurs back, because they've both maybe had a little too much to drink. 

"Do you ever go and visit Hayato?" His voice is quiet, and his eyes are half-lidded, like he's staring into the distance at something Ryu can't see. It's an unusually somber expression on his face, but thinking about Hayato has a way of dragging out the darkest parts of them.

Ryu closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and despite the alcohol and the hot ramen and the spices and egg scenting the air, Ryu can still smell sterility, and despite Hyuuga's raucous laughter, he can still hear the steady beeping sound that represents Hayato's heartbeat.

"No," Ryu says. "Not since… the move. I can't."

"Oh," Take says, and then he sighs. "He'd like it, if you did."

"He doesn't like anything, now," Ryu snaps back, and Take flinches, and when Ryu opens his own eyes, Take's look a little glassy, even through the sake-haze that swims at the edges of Ryu's vision. 

"You're wrong," Take says. "And you give up too easily."

"Do I?" Ryu replies, and his tongue wets his lips. He can't really feel them; they’ve gone numb from a little too much sake for a school night.

“Not always,” Take says. “You used to see things through to the end.”

“It’s already the end,” Ryu says. “Now is just… after the end. It’s the boring part of a fairytale.”

"Did I ever thank you?" Take asks. "For that time?" He sounds a little past drunk, to Ryu. But Ryu remembers the time Take is speaking of. Of course he does. He’d thought, then, that _that_ was the worst he could ever feel.

 

_”You’re not Kurogin’s leader,” Hayato says. “A man is nothing if he isn’t strong.”_

_“A man always makes his own decisions,” Ryu replies, and Hayato winces as his own words are thrown back at him. “I have reasons for mine.”_

_“Don’t you know I…” Hayato looks down. “Never mind.”_

 

"Yes," Ryu says. "Lots of times."

"Well, thank you," Take says. "You're a good friend."

Ryu isn't a good friend at all, but sometimes it heals him a little to hear the words, even if he doesn't deserve them. He thinks Take knows that, somehow, with his empathetic heart and eyes that seem to peer into all the gloomy places Ryu tries not to show. Take has always been the best at expressing his feelings. Ryu's always just fumbled around in the dark.

"Not really," Ryu says. "If I were I’d be braver. But you're welcome."

Take pats him on the back, and Ryu takes another drink.

**

Ryu has a recurring nightmare that comes only when he's so tired he can't wake himself up.

In the nightmare, it's pitch-black outside, and all the street lamps are blown out, leaving the street dark and dangerous. Ryu's breathing hard, like he's been running, and there are lancets of pain that bite into his ribs, as if they're broken. There's harsh breathing all around him, and Ryu is surrounded, and he can't see how many there are, because it's so dark.

Panic crawls up from his belly and into his heart, and Ryu is so _fucking scared_ that it almost paralyzes him.

And then there's pain, the familiar pain of getting the shit beaten out of him, and then there's blood, and Ryu feels himself fading out, and when he looks down at himself, he's not Ryu anymore; he's Hayato, and it's Hayato who is hurting, and it's Hayato's blood covering his hands, and when he screams, it's Hayato's voice.

"Ryu," he says. "Ryu, help."

When Ryu wakes up, he's shivering, and he always reaches up and touches his face to make sure he's Ryu again, and his eyes and head ache like he never went to sleep at all.

"Hayato," he whispers, and there's no answer, because Ryu is here, in his empty apartment, alone.

Ryu, now, is always alone.

**

“Odagiri!” calls a voice behind him, and Ryu spins around. It’s a stiff turn, because the uniform is new and unyielding; his mother had ironed it with starch this morning, smiling at him softly when he came downstairs to collect the jacket. It’s the first day of junior high, and Ryu is, as usual, standing alone.

“Hayato,” Ryu says, surprised. “I mean, Yabuki.”

“Hayato’s fine,” Hayato says, a big toothy grin splitting his face. “I’m surprised you remember me, rich boy.”

“Why?” Ryu counters. “You remembered me.”

Hayato blinks, like he hadn’t expected it to be turned back on him, and sticks his hands in his pockets. His uniform is new, but he wears it guardedly, almost like he’s not used to new things, or like he feels less safe with them. His sleeves are too long on his jacket. It’s been bought with room to grow. 

Ryu wishes he didn’t notice these things. 

“Of course I’d remember you,” Hayato says. “How could I forget the guy wearing a coat that costs more than my dad makes in a month?” Hayato tosses his hair. “We went to the same elementary school, anyway. I saw you around.”

Ryu flushes and scowls, and looks to the left, out the hallway window, and into the courtyard in front of the school, where students still mill around talking to their friends. “Fair enough,” Ryu says, and he wonders why Hayato is still here. “Why are you talking to me?”

“What?” Hayato says, tilting his head to the side. “Why not?”

“People don’t usually talk to me,” Ryu replies. “Because I’m… well, boring.” Boring might not be the right word, but it’s close enough. Ryu spends most moments wondering about the consequences of every single action he takes, and by the time he’s weighed it all out, the chance has passed him by, and he’s done nothing at all.

“Maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t,” Hayato says. “But I’ll figure it out for myself.” Hayato shifts from foot to foot. His uniform shirt is unbuttoned, and he’s wearing a gray t-shirt underneath. His hair is too long. He looks anything but regulation. 

“Oh,” Ryu says. “I see.”

“I decide everything on my own,” Hayato says. “A man always makes his own decisions.”

Ryu frowns, and lets his hair fall into his eyes. They’re only thirteen. Not men, not yet. But Ryu supposes Hayato is used to being treated like a man, too. “I see,” he repeats, and his father’s face looms in the forefront of his mind. His father would not approve of Hayato at all.

A little piece of Ryu likes that.

“So what class are you in, Odagiri?” Hayato says, and Ryu notices, all of a sudden, that Hayato doesn’t even have a school bag. “I’m in 1D.”

“1A,” Ryu says, and Hayato waggles his brows. 

“Oooooh, first class,” Hayato says. “A real smart guy.”

“Not smart,” Ryu says. “Just… my dad.” Hayato peers at him closely, getting into Ryu’s personal space. Ryu feels short in front of him, because Hayato is long and lean and smells like powdered sugar. The cut on his face has healed. Of course it has. It’s been a while.

“You’re not a stickler for the rules, are you?” Hayato asks, and he cuffs Ryu on the shoulder. “We might have problems, if you are.”

“I don’t know,” Ryu says, and for some reason his heart is beating so fast, and his palms are sweaty. “I’ve never really thought about it, before.”

“Well, while you think about it,” Hayato says, clutching at Ryu’s wrist and putting wrinkles into his navy uniform jacket. “Let me introduce you to some of my friends.” Ryu moves naturally to follow.

“Isn’t class about to start?” Ryu asks, but he’s less worried about it than he should be. Something about Hayato, who is made of nothing but rough edges, makes Ryu feel like his own jagged bits fit right into the cracks. 

“So?” Hayato says, and his grin is huge and somehow it makes Ryu feel, for the first time, like he belongs.

**

One day, Ryu will forget the way his uniform jacket scratched his neck, or the way his lip had stung after a fight where he’d been lucky to get away with his nose intact. One day he’ll forget the way his father had looked at him like he was _nothing_ the first time he’d limped home after a fight, or the way the peroxide had burned and bubbled in the cuts on the backs of his knuckles.

One day he’ll forget the way he’d slowly stopped caring about anything but watching Hayato’s back, school and responsibility falling by the wayside to Hayato’s whims and demands. 

He might forget all of that, but Ryu will never forget the way Hayato would wrap Ryu’s arm about his neck after a particularly tough fight and drag him home after everything was said and done, ignoring his own injuries. Ryu will never forget the way Hayato’s smile was like the breaking dawn, playful and just a bit devious and spilling little rays of light into Ryu’s life. He’ll never forget the way Hayato clawed his way inside Ryu’s heart and still has never left. 

He’ll never forget that, and maybe, sometimes, that truth haunts him.

**

“You really did have big plans last night, didn’t you?” Uchiyama says the next morning, as Ryu rests his forehead against the cool metal of his desk, the chill of it soothing for his pounding head.

Ryu grunts in response, and it’s enough to make his stomach turn. He hasn’t had a hangover this bad in a long time, and he didn’t even make it to bed until four in the morning. Probably not the best choice for a school night, and Ryu feels a tad guilty, but he’ll pull it together just fine in time for classes in a few hours. 

“Well, sorry for doubting you,” Uchiyama says, and he rests his hand briefly on Ryu’s shoulder before he walks past. “And here I thought ‘big plans’ meant doing your laundry or something like that.”

Ryu almost wishes it had, the way he aches, but seeing his friends had been… good. Even with all the memories, seeing the people he fought his way through high school with makes him feel a little more whole. “No first period today,” Ryu says. “Get back to me in a few hours.”

“When you wake up, _sensei_?” Uchiyama laughs, and it grates in his ears, because it’s too early. When he’d done roll call and homeroom this morning, his class had sounded like a dull roar, but that might not have had anything to do with his hangover.

Ryu’s own homeroom class, in high school, had been loud too, shouting and screaming and quieting just a little under Yankumi’s firm hand. Ryu doesn’t mind the noise, usually.

“It was good to see my friends,” Ryu adds, continuing the conversation almost against his will. 

“Not a girl!” Shiratori crows, and Ryu and Uchiyama both turn to look at her. The movement hurts Ryu’s head, and Shiratori flushes awkwardly. “Sorry.”

“I should go get ready for class,” Ryu mumbles, and drags himself up from his seat, pressing his palms flat from the table to push himself up. He’s forgone a tie today, and the top button of his shirt is left undone, and obviously, no one but Ryu notices, but it’s enough to make Ryu feel self-conscious.

The classroom is still empty when he gets there, his students still in athletics class, and Ryu takes a moment to survey the classroom, graffiti decorating the walls and chairs overturned.

It’s strange, Ryu thinks, how time can pass but things still say the same. Another 3D, another room full of kids with problems and attitudes and mouths that move before their brains catch up. 

Another teacher who wants them all to graduate for his own reasons as well as for their sakes.

They invade, all shouts and sweat and dust, and Ryu is prepared for them, his painkillers having finally started kicking in as he moves to the chalkboard to put the assignment up. 

By the end of the day, though, Ryu is exhausted, and he’s still got a long day ahead of him, because after school, he’s got to stop by his parents’ house and visit his mother. His father won’t be home, which is a relief, but it’s enough to have to see his mother. Ryu wishes, sometimes, that every day wasn’t a battle. 

“Kamiyama,” he says, as the students rush out of the classroom, headed for unsuspecting cafes and karaoke rooms and restaurants. “Wait.” Kamiyama halts, and he’s moving stiff, like Hayato used to if he didn’t ice.

“What’s up?” Kamiyama says, shoulders tense like he’s waiting for a rebuke. Ryu notes that he’s got an angry cut along the side of his face, the kind with puffy edges. A knife-cut, then, one that doesn’t need stitches but worries Ryu anyway.

“That assignment…” Ryu says, instead of what he wants to say. “Don’t forget it. You don’t need any more zeroes, all right?”

Kamiyama frowns, and looks at Ryu suspiciously. “Why do you care so much? No one else does.”

Ryu knows what it’s like to have people give up on you. He also knows what it’s like, he thinks, to know you have people who won’t. “Graduating’s important, okay?”

“Not everyone is good at school, or cares about it,” Kamiyama says, and Ryu’s stomach lurches in a way that’s got nothing to do with his lunch sitting heavy in his hangover-affected belly. “Why do I need to think about the future?”

The words echo words he’s heard before; things he’s felt, things _Hayato_ felt, and it hurts him to hear them again. 

“Because this isn’t the end,” Ryu says. “Life doesn’t stop after high school.” Things end, but it’s not, necessarily, when you expect them to.

“Things are fine this way,” Kamiyama says. “There are a few gangs willing to take me on, and…”

 _It’s okay,_ Hayato had said. _I can get part-time work with some guys I met, and—_

“I sucked at school,” Ryu says, interrupting Kamiyama. “I had terrible grades, and in the last year, I stopped coming to school for months because I didn’t see the point. I’d found work with a gang, and what was a degree going to be worth?”

Ryu doesn’t talk much to his students. Even when he’s teaching, he’s circumspect—saying just the number of words he needs to get the point across and nothing more. Now, he thinks, the words are just tumbling out, and Kamiyama’s eyebrows are almost up to his hairline with surprise.

Ryu closes his eyes, and behind them, Hayato is so still, chest moving so slightly up and down slowly and steadily, mouth slack and parted.

“I had a teacher, then, who wouldn’t give up on me. My parents had given up long ago, when they realized I wasn’t going to lead the sort of life they’d planned.”

“You were—“

“Class 3D,” Ryu says, and Kamiyama, when Ryu opens his eyes again, is looking at him in shock. 

“But you’re a _teacher_ ,” Kamiyama says. “And I could totally take you in a fight.”

Ryu cracks his knuckles and narrows his eyes. “Wanna bet?” he says, in the same low voice he used on rivals, and Kamiyama gulps. 

“No,” Kamiyama says. “I guess I don’t.” 

“I’m a teacher now because I wanted to be,” Ryu says. “And you can be whatever you want to be, too. You don’t have to…” _I can get part-time work with some guys I met--_ “You need to have good enough grades that you can get a job,” Ryu says. “Doing something that means something to you.”

“Right,” Kamiyama says. “Well, my friends and I—“

“My best friend,” Ryu says, slowly. “You remind me of him.”

“What’s he do?” Kamiyama asks. “Is he a teacher, too?” Kamiyama’s sarcastic, like he thinks Ryu is some kind of ‘stay in school’ commercial, and not a real person. His interest is waning, head leaning toward the door like he wants to follow his friends outside. Ryu guesses he does, and he doesn’t blame his student.

“He doesn’t do anything anymore,” Ryu replies, and the words stick a bit, but he gets them out. He looks down at his hands. He’s got thick calluses on his knuckles still, and scars. A record of who he used to be. “He _can’t_ do anything, anymore.”

Ryu’s not a fighter, now. He’s come to realize that without Hayato, he hasn’t got much fight in him. 

Ryu doesn’t want Kamiyama to end up like either of them. His necklace feels like a shackle around his neck. Ryu fights the urge to touch it.

“Oh,” Kamiyama says. “I see.”

“The assignment,” Ryu says quietly, turning around and waving Kamiyama away, because he’s got to leave soon if he wants to be on time for tea. His mother’s always detested tardiness, and Ryu’s enough of a disappointment already. “Don’t forget it.”

Kamiyama is silent for a moment, as Ryu packs his basket and readies himself to go back to the teacher’s office. 

“Odagiri- _sensei_ ,” Kamiyama says, and Ryu turns. He thinks he may have even managed to school his face into something that doesn’t resemble the turmoil inside him. “Thanks for giving me the extra time. I won’t forget.”

“Sure,” Ryu says, and Kamiyama gives him a slight bow, and Ryu wonders if maybe he became a teacher because it’s like going back in time and changing himself. “Try not… try not to get hurt, all right?”

Kamiyama gives him a sardonic salute.

**

There’s a different version of the nightmare, where Ryu is the one who is attacking, not the one being attacked, and Hayato’s eyes as he lies beneath him look so scared and so betrayed. His fists burn, and Hayato is blurry in his vision, like Ryu is crying, which is how Ryu knows it’s a dream, because Ryu doesn’t remember how to cry.

**

_I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started._

  
\--Ernest Hemingway, _A Farewell To Arms_

**

“You look cold,” Hayato says, and Ryu grimaces. He tugs his navy uniform jacket a little closer around his thin frame, and tries to disguise his shivering, even though he knows it’s a lost cause. He’s a bit small, even considering he’s only 13, and he mostly only regrets it during times like this, when the wind seems to whip through him instead of against him.

“Of course I’m cold,” he says. “It’s the middle of winter.”

Hayato takes the end of his scarf and wraps it around Ryu’s neck. He steps closer so the knit doesn’t pull. “I don’t get that cold,” Hayato says. “But I figured you wouldn’t accept the whole scarf.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Ryu says. Hayato’s so close to him now their arms brush with every step. “Thank you.”

“What are friends for?” Hayato says, and Ryu’s stomach flips, inexplicably, in a way that leaves him feeling confused and pleased and a little lost.

“Thank you,” Ryu says again, and it’s not just about the scarf, and Hayato elbows him.

“Shut up,” Hayato says, and Ryu laughs as he kicks up a bit of yesterday’s snow with his worn sneakers.

**

Fairytales, Ryu thinks, always have a happy ending. Cinderella falls in love with Prince Charming, and he rescues her from a life of poverty and drudgery, and they live happily ever after. Snow White manages to charm even the most obstinate of the dwarves and find her happily ever after. Momotarou, a boy born from a peach, manages to save his entire village and defeat all the demons who had robbed them, leaving them even better off than when they’d started.

Fairytales, Ryu thinks, make real life even more painful, because when things work out differently than they work in the stories, you can’t help but think about how it could have been.

Fairytales also make real life more painful because you never see everything—only the good parts make it into the tale, after all.

Sleeping Beauty, Ryu remembers, slept for one hundred years before she woke.

After all that time, Ryu thinks, she must have felt so lonely when she realized everyone she’d ever loved was gone.

And all the time she slept, those people were missing her.

Ryu can understand that kind of loneliness. Ryu knows that ache better than he knows anything else.

**

It smells like sugar, Ryu thinks; sugar and chocolate.

“You’ll be in 2B next year, your teacher said,” his mother says calmly. “Because your test scores have dropped. Your father will be disappointed.”

“I know,” Ryu says, and his mother slowly mixes the batter. She’s too calm, and Ryu’s on edge. “It’s… not going to be bad.”

“Your father has big dreams for you, Ryu. Don’t let him down.” Her pace doesn’t change; nor does the tone of her voice, but Ryu feels himself shrinking and shrinking, until it’s as if he is two feet tall, looking up at the world from the lowest possible vantage point. He doesn’t feel much like a man; he feels thirteen, through and through. “You might want to stop associating with those boys.”

Those boys, she says, like they’re just people Ryu will drop like they’re nothing. Hayato’s hand has become a familiar weight upon his shoulder, and Take’s gentle smile has become a common courtyard greeting. Ryu’s homeroom teacher looks at Ryu with disdain when he walks into class five minutes late, taking too long to say his goodbyes to his friends in the morning. Ryu is pretty sure Hayato barely bothers with class. Hayato doesn’t bother with much.

But he bothers with Ryu, seeking him out during lunch and after school, dragging Ryu to cafes and arcades. Ryu feels… well, for the first time in his life, he feels wanted, and special, and like he matters to someone. _“Ryu,”_ Hayato says, in a voice that cracks. _“Ryu, hurry up!”_ and he waits. He waits for Ryu, or tugs on Ryu’s arm if Ryu is walking too slow, and he smiles at Ryu.

Hayato is his friend. _Friend_. Ryu doesn’t even have to say the word to taste it. It tastes like sugar and chocolate. 

“No,” Ryu says, and then her hand stills. Just for a moment, but it’s a pregnant enough pause that Ryu notices. Then she sighs, and takes to the cake mix again. “I don’t want to.”

“You must consider your future, Ryu.” She rests the spoon against the side of the bowl and retrieves a pan. She slowly greases the bottom, methodical as always. It’s the same way she prepares her tea, and surveys the newspaper. Everything Ryu’s mother does is steady and predicable, like the ocean tides receding in the mid-morning. “And your father’s reputation.”

“I know,” Ryu says, but he can’t even fathom, anymore, a future without Hayato. Hayato is prickly and short-tempered and violent, and his speech is loud and rude. He’s gruff and reckless and melodramatic, too. But, he’s also Ryu’s. He’s Ryu’s friend, and Ryu is his friend, too. Hayato is important. 

Hayato is worth every disgusted curl of his father’s lip at another lackluster test performance. Hayato is worth the hunch of his mother’s back right now as she contemplates his refusal. 

“Don’t let your performance suffer any more than it already has, then. You’ve got to think about high school entrance exams,” his mother says, and Ryu nods. She can’t see him, but it’s enough. Ryu’s silence has always been enough, here.

Suddenly, it’s hard for Ryu to breathe. Something about this house, this kitchen, this moment, feels stifling. He needs to escape.

Ryu goes up to his room and rips off his tie, throwing it onto the floor, and collapses face first onto his bed. 

His whole life, so far, he’s followed all the rules, under the watchful eye of his father, when he’s not too busy with his job to be at home. _“You’re not a stickler for the rules, are you?”_ Hayato had asked, and Ryu’s stomach is churning. He’s not sure why this feels so scary.

He falls asleep in his uniform. His father isn’t home to chastise him in the morning for it though, and Ryu is twenty minutes late for class.

He doesn’t wear his tie because, he realizes, he hates the way it feels like a chain around his neck. 

“No tie?” Hayato asks, warm eyes lingering on Ryu’s undone top button on his shirt. 

“I hate ties,” Ryu says, and Hayato laughs, and Ryu feels warm, even though it’s autumn.

“Me too,” Hayato says, and Ryu undoes another button, just because he feels like it.


	2. Chapter 2

**

“Hello,” Ryu says, as his mother opens the door and allows him in. “How are you?”

“Well,” she replies, the same way she always does, taking his coat and then walking into the receiving room, waiting for him to follow. “And you?”

There are countless answers Ryu would give if it weren’t his mother. _Hungover_ or _miserable_ or _so empty and alone that I can’t wait to fall asleep at night, so I can pretend, just for a few moments, that Hayato will be here tomorrow_ are all true enough answers, but they reveal parts of himself he’s never felt free to share with his mother.

When his mother invites him for tea, once every few weeks, she doesn’t want to hear about how Ryu’s biting his nails again, or how Ryu has a student who won’t turn in his homework and another who is constantly texting his girlfriend during class. She doesn’t want to hear about how Ryu’s afraid his plants are going to die because there’s a draft in his apartment, or about how Ryu’s got a hole in his heart a mile wide that he can’t seem to fill, no matter how hard he tries.

She doesn’t want to hear about that. She never has, and that’s why Ryu wears his work clothes over to visit her, because this is all part of his job, really. His part-time job pretending he’s not broken and lonely and waiting for a resolution that might never come. 

“Everything’s fine,” he says, and the green tea is bitter on his tongue. It tastes like winter. Ryu wonders if it’s going to snow.

“Do you still see your friends?” she asks, and there’s an edge to her voice, but Ryu can barely notice it. She’s getting better. 

“I saw them yesterday,” Ryu replies. “It was fun.”

She nods in acknowledgement.

“Do you need anything from your room?” she asks, and Ryu considers. A couple of sweaters he’d left might come in handy, he thinks, if winter continues like this. It’s only early December, and February is when it all really starts to set in. 

“Yes,” Ryu remarks. I’ll be right back. He politely excuses himself from the table, setting his half-empty cup back down on the tray where the pot rests, and makes his way up the stairs. 

It’s a small matter to find the sweaters, pulling them down from the shelf quickly. He tries not to look around, but a sudden gust of wind hits a branch into the glass, and Ryu turns in surprise. 

The balcony. _Let’s run away_ Hayato had said, like a Shakespearean hero. _Let’s go where your father can’t find us._ His friends, waiting.

Ryu feels like he’s back in a familiar cage.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” his mother asks, and Ryu nods, clutching the sweaters against his chest. They’re cashmere. _So soft, rich boy_. 

“Yes,” Ryu says. “I did.” The fabric is soothing between his fingers. 

“Winter will be cold this year,” his mother says. 

“It already is,” Ryu replies. Anyway, Ryu is always cold.

**

Hayato’s mother is beautiful. Her long, dark hair falls wavy and unrestrained to her shoulders, and her eyes are like cinnamon, warm and wild. There’s something in them that’s playful, even though she sits very still, palms pressed lady-like to her stomach and back firm against the headboard. 

Hayato looks just like her.

“And who might you be?” she asks, and Ryu swallows. He’s not sure why he feels suddenly nervous, but maybe it’s the way she looks at him. It’s nothing like the way his own mother looks at him, like she’s checking him over for flaws or things out of place. Hayato’s mother just looks straight into his eyes, like she’s measuring what’s inside, and Ryu wonders, a bit, if he’ll be found lacking. 

“I’m Odagiri Ryu,” Ryu says, and he bows low, and he feels stuffy, like his manners are too much for a home in which no one stands on ceremony. “Sorry,” he adds, and straightens, scratching anxiously at his wrist where it peeks out of his sleeve. His mother hasn’t noticed yet, but soon, Ryu will wake up and there will be a new uniform hanging on his doorknob. It’s too bad, because Ryu’s just worn this one in so it’s comfortable. He tugs the sleeve again. “Just Ryu is fine.”

“Well, Ryu, come closer so I can take a look at you.” She’s squinting a bit, and she’s obviously not going to get up, so Ryu slips a little closer, his sock feet gliding across the uncluttered floor of the room. The rest of the house looks like a train-wreck, but in here, it is pristine. He wonders if it’s because she likes it that way, or because her two sons demand it—she doesn’t look like she’d be the kind of woman to mind a bit of chaos. “Well, aren’t you handsome,” she says, and Ryu blushes, and she laughs, a throaty sound that gives him goosebumps. She smiles like Hayato, big and wide, and her eyes are like his too.

Maybe that’s why he feels comfortable enough to perch gingerly on the edge of the bed, letting his hands rest on either side of him, pressing into the sheets, rather than on his lap. His mother would frown, but Hayato’s mother just smiles. She’s so soft.

“You seem like a good boy,” she says, almost to herself, and then she nods, and closes her eyes, taking a labored breath.

She must be very sick, Ryu thinks, and it explains why Hayato’s been so hesitant to discuss her.

Taku curls up on her left side and Hayato drapes himself over her legs, and Hayato’s mother threads her fingers through Hayato’s wild hair. “Hayato, your hair’s a mess,” she chides, teasing lilt to her voice. “When you get older, make sure it always looks nice, okay? Otherwise all the girls will pass you by.”

“I don’t want girls,” Hayato says, curling his lip and moving closer to her hand anyway, like a cat seeking attention. 

“You might, someday,” she replies, and her voice sounds wistful. Ryu wonders how sick she is. 

It doesn’t seem to matter in the moment, as Ryu sits on the edge of the bed and watches them. They’re a family, Ryu realizes. A real one, not like what he’s got; what Ryu has is three people with separate lives living under one roof with enough money to ensure that they never have to talk to each other. 

What Hayato’s got, Ryu realizes, is so much more than that. 

“You’ve got a beautiful family,” Ryu whispers, and Hayato is teasing Taku, tickling his ankles and stomach until Taku shrieks, and doesn’t hear, but his mother does, and her eyes sharpen in on him, freezing him in place. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, not really. 

“I know,” she says, and Hayato hears her, and looks between the two of them quickly and curiously as Taku continues to noisily roll away despite Hayato’s stilled fingers. 

“You know?” Hayato asks, and Ryu averts his eyes. 

“I need to get home,” Ryu says, and the word sticks in his throat, just a little. “To my house, I mean. My mother will be expecting me.”

“Right,” Hayato says, and his brow knits together. “Let me walk you part of the way.”

“You don’t have to,” Ryu protests quickly, and Hayato’s mother smiles as Hayato huffs and rolls his eyes. 

“I don’t _have_ to do anything,” he says, and crosses his arms. “I just feel like it, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Ryu says, and he feels his face flush, and Hayato looks a bit embarrassed as well. “Thanks, then.”

“Well, c’mon,” Hayato says, and Ryu follows him out, stopping to bow at Hayato’s mother before closing the door softly behind him.

Hayato is quiet as Ryu slips on his shoes in the _genkan_ and doesn’t bother to put on his own, opting instead for his slippers, black ones with two white stripes across the strap. Ryu sees the tiny hole in Hayato’s sock, and he bites back the urge to worry. 

It’s freezing outside, and Ryu wraps arms around himself as the chill seeps through his uniform jacket. Hayato’s not wearing any parts of his uniform, just sweats and a big jacket Ryu thinks must belong to Hayato’s dad. 

“Your mom is nice,” Ryu says. “Wonderful.”

“She is,” Hayato says. “My dad’s cool too. He’s just busy.”

“Busy?” Ryu asks. “Mine, too.”

“It’s not the same, though,” Hayato says. “Is it?”

“No,” Ryu says, because even when everyone is home, they’re all in separate rooms, finding ways to coexist in the same space without ever catching sight of each other. Ryu didn’t realize it was unusual for a long time, but Hayato’s not afraid of touch, and Ryu flinches back instinctually from it. 

“Is it lonely?” Hayato asks, and Ryu stops, and Hayato stops too, the both of them just standing in the street, looking at each other. “At your house?” Hayato’s mouth is drawn, and his eyes slide to the left, focusing on a bike or a wall, or maybe a shop-sign. Ryu isn’t sure because he can’t look away from his friend, whose face is reddened from the wind.

Ryu has hundreds of responses, that range from _None of your business_ to _Not at all, don’t worry,_ but this is Hayato. Hayato is Ryu’s friend; his first friend, and his best friend. “Yes,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s hands clench into fists. Ryu wonders if his fingers are cold. He has the strange urge to take them between his own and warm them. 

“You can…” Hayato stops, or more like he stutters, nose scrunching and eyes narrowing, suddenly finding Ryu’s. They gleam in the streetlights. “You don’t need them, Ryu.”

“What do you mean?” Ryu asks, and Hayato steps closer, just close enough that Ryu can feel the heat of his body. Just close enough that Ryu can feel _him_. “They’re the only family I have.”

“You have me,” Hayato says, and then his face flames, and it’s not from the wind or the cold, but that’s all right, because Ryu’s heart has frozen in place, and he can’t tease Hayato, not right now. 

“I do?” Ryu asks, and he hates the hopeful note in his voice, because he’s thirteen, and old enough that he shouldn’t sound like a little kid anymore. He’s also too old to keep wishing for things he shouldn’t want, and he shouldn’t need.

“I can be your family,” Hayato says, and he presses his lips together, and Ryu feels a little like time has paused, but it’s still going, going so fast he’s out of breath. It’s almost involuntary, the way he reaches out for Hayato’s hands, clutching them in his own. 

Just like he’d thought, they are cold. He rubs them between his own hands, like he’d seen once, in a movie, and Hayato flinches at the first graze of Ryu’s smooth hands against his callused ones, before his hands unfurl, seeking warmth. “What are you saying things like that for?” Ryu mumbles, trying to swallow around all the things welling up inside him and trying to escape out of his throat. “I don’t need anyone.”

“Me either,” Hayato says. “But just… just in case.” Ryu’s eyes feel wet, not like he’s crying, because Ryu doesn’t cry, but maybe like he wants to go into his bedroom and hide beneath the covers. Then he can pull this memory up and unfold it, and take in all the little bits of it he might have missed the first time around, before he folds it back up and slips it into a hidden pocket in his mind with everything else about Hayato that he treasures.

“Okay,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s cold knuckles don’t feel so cold anymore. Ryu’s always had a lot of body-heat. He guesses it makes up for how lonely he is—he can keep himself warm. He drops Hayato’s hands, and they find their way into Hayato’s pockets. “I can walk the rest of the way by myself.”

“Yeah?” Hayato queries, and then he exhales. “See you tomorrow, Ryu.”

“Of course,” Ryu says, and Hayato turns around, walking back toward his place. Ryu licks his lips, and the wind bites at them.

Hayato is his first friend. His _best_ friend. And no matter how many people Ryu meets, Hayato will always be the most important. Ryu wonders if that’s what family is supposed to mean.

Ryu wonders if this is his fairytale.

(Hayato doesn’t call him ‘rich boy’ anymore, after that.)

**

“It was great seeing you last week,” Take says in his MMS. Ryu squints, because the text on his phone is too small, but he’s noticed Uchiyama peek over his shoulder enough times to see what Ryu’s reading that he’s shrunk the text as a precautionary measure, even when he’s not at work.

He searches through his contacts and calls Take, because Ryu’s terrible at texting.

“Yes, it was,” Ryu says. “I had fun.”

“That’s good,” Take says. “Look, Ryu…”

“What do you need?” Ryu asks, pushing his bangs out of his face and sighing. He’s managed to get all the crumpled up papers… ideas for lesson plans and notes to himself about employment restrictions that he’s typing up for the students so they’ll know which laws not to break if they want any hope of finding a job; all he’s got left, really, is to get rid of the magazines and newspapers and send them to recycling, and he’ll have finished one room. 

“I ran into Taku, today. I went to the grocer’s to pick up eggs, and there he was.”

Ryu swallows. “How does he—I mean, is he okay?”

“He is,” Take replies. “But… he says he hasn’t seen you in a while.”

“I should… yes, I’ll stop by. See how he’s doing for myself.”

“You should visit—“

“Don’t push it,” Ryu says sharply, then regrets his tone, because this is Take, not some stranger. “Sorry.”

“That was a bit of the old Ryu, there,” Take says. “I haven’t heard you get upset like that in a while. It’s like your spirit died.”

“What’s there to get upset about?” Ryu says. “Nothing. Why waste the energy?”

“Ryu,” Take says. “Ryu, you _know_ Hayato would hate to see you like this. Just wandering through life like nothing matters.”

“Good thing he won’t, then, isn’t it?” Ryu replies shortly. “Bye, Take.” He hangs up the phone without waiting, licking his lips as he folds the mobile closed and slides it into his pocket.

He surveys the magazines and newspapers, and pushes his sleeves back up, but he can’t focus. “Right. Thanks, Take,” he mumbles under his breath, shedding clothes as he walks toward the bathroom. He steps into the shower and turns the water on as hot as it’ll go. There’s a bit of a draft in his flat, but steam in the shower fights it off, and the five minutes Ryu spends under the water, washing the dust and sweat away, are a peaceful reprieve from the chill. 

He steps out of the shower, toweling completely dry as quickly as he can, wrapping his towel around his hair and walking over to his closet. His necklace bumps against his sternum as he walks.

His apartment is mostly one room. It’s plenty big for him, just separate room-like areas except for the closed off bathroom, and Ryu, most days, just figures it’s easier to clean without all those extra corners and divisions. 

He pulls out a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, pulling it over his head and sticking his arms in quickly, because his damp skin is cool. The sweatshirt is fleece inside; it’s comforting.

He grabs his keys, and his wallet, shoving it into his pocket, and hooking it on a chain that connects to his belt-loop, because when he’s not at school, Ryu likes to maintain the fiction that he hasn’t become boring. 

He locks the door behind him, pulling on his parka because he’s off-duty and he doesn’t have to match a suit. It’s snowing, just a little, and the white flakes catch in his wet bangs, and tickle at his ears. He pulls the hood up as he starts to walk, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

He doesn’t really pay attention as he walks, just focusing on the way the streets look kind of pretty in the twilight, snow glistening on the lamp posts and sticking to the streets in small clumps. It’s okay that he doesn’t pay attention, because he knows the way like the back of his own hand: he’s walked this route so many times he doesn’t even consider, he just turns like he’s on autopilot, checking for cars at street crossings and waving to vendors he’s known for more than ten years, older women who still recognize him even under the fuzzy hood of a jacket he hardly ever wears. 

The cold seeps in through the toes of his shoes as he walks, and the snow is getting heaver. It’s fine, because he’s almost there. 

The apartment building is the same as it’s always been, front door to the building cracked open, the wood frame buckling after years of little maintenance. It’s fine, though, because the concrete holds firm. It’s not a dilapidated building, by any means. 

Ryu is headed to the fifth floor. He takes the stairs, because the elevator has a way of stalling, nowadays. Ryu hasn’t been here in a couple of months, but he doubts it’s been fixed. 

He knocks on the door to number five-twelve with the back of his knuckles, just heavy enough to get attention, but light enough that it won’t disturb Hayato’s dad if he’s sleeping. He works at odd hours, after all, and sleep is precious. 

Taku answers the door. “Ryu?” he says, and he seems surprised, but then he smiles.

Ryu hurts, when Taku smiles, because now they look so alike, and Ryu can see Hayato in every part of Taku’s face. 

“What?” Taku asks, suddenly self-conscious, and Ryu realizes he’s staring. 

“You look like your mother,” Ryu says, and Taku’s eyes widen, like he wasn’t expecting that. 

“Do I?” he asks. “I don’t really remember what she looks like.” He leans back to give Ryu room to move past him. He’s wearing a uniform. “Only from pictures. But I can’t remember what she looked like doing things. Moving around. Laughing. Not like Hayato—” Taku stops. “Long time no see.”

“You have a new part-time job?” Ryu lingers in the doorway, picking up that Hayato’s dad must be asleep, because Taku is speaking softly. 

“College is expensive,” Taku says. “Hayato’s money isn’t enough to cover all the fees. So I got another job. Convenience store, this time.”

“You look like a _freeter_ , not a university student,” Ryu jokes, and Taku grins. 

He recalls the way Hayato had sent him a triumphant e-mail, that he was making enough to save for Taku’s college education. _Taku’s smart_ he had written. _And don’t tell him I said so._ Ryu had laughed and his heart had clenched, and even in Canada, in a six line email, he could feel Hayato’s love for his brother, disguised in teasing and gruff words that simultaneously insulted and praised. 

It was Hayato’s way. 

“Well, we all do what we must,” Taku says. He’s too young to be a freshman, Ryu thinks. Time passes too quickly. Some days, it doesn’t pass quickly enough. Ryu wishes it would make up its mind. 

“How are you? How’s your dad?” Ryu asks, moving in and slumping down on the couch. Taku moves and sits on the arm of a chair.

“He’s okay,” Taku says. “We’re both… okay.”

“That’s good,” Ryu says. “That’s really good.” 

The couch is soft behind his back, and Ryu melts into it. It’s so different from his own family home, with traditional furniture and distance and manners. Taku and Ryu and Hayato had always sat on the couch together, elbows banging into each other as they fought for control of the remote.

“Why do you keep checking up on us?” Taku asks, after a moment of silence that doesn’t feel heavy or awkward. “Not that I want you to stop, or anything. It’s just.”

“You’re my family,” Ryu says. “I never really… Hayato is my family. That makes you my family too.”

“Oh,” Taku says, and his eyes look a little wet. He turns away to stare at the wall. Ryu follows his gaze. Hayato and Taku’s heights are marked along it, years and years of heights, marked in purple for Hayato and orange for Taku. At some point, Ryu’s heights join theirs, in a blue that creeps up behind Hayato’s, never quite catching up. “I guess we are,” he says. “I sort of missed you, when you didn’t come,” and Ryu breathes in.

It doesn’t smell like anything special, but at the same time, it’s familiar. Evenings spent here instead of at his own home. Countless times they’d patched each other up in this bathroom, winced and recounted fights on this couch. “I was being…” Selfish comes to mind, but Ryu just lets it trail off. It doesn’t matter, in the end.

“By the way,” Taku says. “I got you this, just in case.” He stands and walks over to the kitchen table, rooting around until he finds a cream envelope. He returns to the sofa and hands it to Ryu. “No pressure, but if you need it, you have it.”

“Is this…?”

“Yeah,” Taku says. “So no one asks any questions, you know?”

“Thanks,” Ryu says, gripping the envelope a little too tight. It folds and wrinkles in his grip, and the corner digs into the flesh part of his palm. 

“You’re family,” Taku says. “Might as well treat you like you are.”

**

The worst dream isn’t really a dream, it’s a memory. Ryu is walking down the street, the early spring weather a relief after the deep winter. The grass smells fresh and sweet. 

Ryu can’t focus on the weather, though, because he’s got an important examination. His teacher’s examination, actually. He’s got to pass it; he’s studied hard, reading up on rules and regulations that differ from the ones he studied in Canada.

His phone rings, and it’s Hayato’s name in the caller ID. “Hayato?”

“Ryu?” Hayato sounds a bit breathless. It’s too early for him to be breathless, but he does work down at the docks. Ryu’s not sure exactly what Hayato does, only that he’d frowned the last time Ryu had asked and Ryu had pushed the worry away for another day.

Everything is still too nice—too new and yet too familiar, for Ryu to look past all the pleasant feelings that rush through him at the thought of being back in Japan. Back with Hayato. 

“What’s wrong?” Ryu asks. “You sound tired.”

“Yeah,” Hayato says. “Just a little.” His voice catches. “Hey Ryu, what would you think if I got a new job?”

“I don’t know anything about your old one,” Ryu replies, and Hayato laughs, and it’s a little bitter. 

“You don’t want to, really,” he says, and Ryu’s stomach twists, and he keeps walking forward. “Anyway, what if I changed jobs? It’d be hard to find a new one, but…”

“But what?”

“You’re going to be a teacher. Teachers are role models, right? Upstanding members of society. I don’t want to drag you down.”

“Hayato,” Ryu says, and he looks up, realizing he’s made it to the building where he’ll take his test. He checks his watch. Seven minutes to spare. He leans up against the building. “Hayato.”

“Anyway, I was thinking. What if I got a job that I could talk about. That you could tell people I did if they asked.”

If they asked. Because Hayato wanted to be a part of Ryu’s life. A permanent part, and one that Ryu wouldn’t have to hide as much. One where they could go out to eat and his students wouldn’t stare. It would be. “That would be…”

“Yeah,” Hayato says. “I think so, too.”

“We could get an apartment,” Ryu says. “Mine might be too small.”

“I’ll quit today,” Hayato says. Ryu has so much he wants to say, but he can’t, not right now. All the fear and anxiety about his exam has vanished, replaced with this fountain of welling optimism that makes him feel like he’s floating. 

Ryu has so much he wants to say. Instead, he watches fellow examinees make their way into the building, walking through the glass door, and he licks his lips and presses the phone closer to his ear, so it digs into his face. His hair, the tips still red, falls into his eyes. “I have to go now,” Ryu says. “My exam.”

“Right, shit, I’m sorry. You’ve got other things to worry about—”

“No,” Ryu says. “I’m glad you called.”

“So it’s a good idea?”

“Yes,” Ryu says. “Fuck the consequences. Move in with me while you look for a job. I don’t care.”

“All right,” Hayato says. “Okay.” 

“Later,” Ryu says, and Hayato hangs up. Ryu holds the phone to his ear, just listening to the dial tone. 

It’s the last time they speak. 

Ryu always wakes up to his alarm, and it sounds just like the dial tone in his ear did in that moment. It sounds just like it, and Ryu’s heart breaks, every fucking time.

**

All these brambles and thorns, impenetrable, grow up around Sleeping Beauty’s glass coffin. Closed off from the world, living in darkness. Alone.

Ryu wonders what Sleeping Beauty sees behind her eyes as she sleeps.

He hopes she knows everyone is waiting for her to wake up.

**

Ryu’s necklace isn’t really his own. He remembers when it became his; it was the day of his teacher’s exam. About three hours after it, actually, as afternoon turned to evening.

He sits, shaking and tired, in an uncomfortable chair at the police station.

The cop who is questioning him at least looks sympathetic, his eyes tilting down on the outer corners as he speaks slowly and clearly, and Ryu swims through the molasses-like haze of shock that fills his head to try and dredge up answers. 

“Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“He wanted to quit his job,” Ryu whispers. “He just… He was going to quit today.”

“Quit his job, huh?” The cop says, scribbling something in his notebook.. “What did he do, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Ryu says, and why is it so _cold_ in here? It doesn’t make sense, he thinks, when it’s warm outside, the first of the spring flowers starting to peek out of the ground to say hello to the new weather. “I don’t know anything.” Ryu reaches up and pushes a hand through his hair, and his hand is trembling, he notices. 

The officer notices too. “Can I get you some tea?”

Tea. It’s spring. The only thing his mother would think is suitable is green tea with hibiscus. A gentle, soothing tea to welcome the season. “No, thank you,” Ryu says. His necktie itches, so he loosens it. He undoes the top button too.

 _Look at you, shirt buttoned all the way up,_ Hayato had said that morning, as Ryu had prepared to leave for his examination. Hayato himself had been dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, his hair flipping up over the collar of the jacket he wore over everything. Hayato had reached forward and slid his thumb along the line of Ryu’s jaw, stopping right below Ryu’s ear. They’d breathed in time. _Are you really the same guy I went to high school with?_

 _Always,_ Ryu had replied, and Hayato had smiled, and now. And now…

“I think that’s all we’ll need, for now,” the police officer says kindly. He considers, for a moment, and then pulls out a plastic bag, a small one, smaller than his hand. “We found this, at the scene. It’s not evidence, we don’t think.”

Ryu looks at it, eyes taking in the snapped chain and the pendant that rests loose and separate in the bag. “That’s Hayato’s,” Ryu says.

“We figured,” the officer says. “We figured it was his.”

“Yes,” Ryu says, and he reaches out tentatively, and the officer nods. 

“You can… You can take it.”

“Shouldn’t you give it to his father?” Ryu says, because despite everything, he’s still the son of a policeman.

“I’ll trust you to get it where it needs to go,” the officer says, and he gives Ryu a knowing look, like he knows that where it needs to go is to Ryu.

Ryu grabs the bag, crushing it in the palm of his hand by curling up his shaking fingers. “I’ll take care of it,” Ryu says, and it burns, in his palm; it burns like promises Ryu will never get to keep. “Can I go home?”

“Yes, of course,” the police officer says, and he stands, and Ryu stands, somehow, even though he’s dizzy and feels like the whole world is falling apart. “I’m sure you want to get to the hos—”

“Thank you,” Ryu says. He walks across the station, and he feels everyone’s eyes on him, and it makes him square his shoulders until he gets out the door. When the doors close behind him though, Ryu crouches down at the curb, wrapping his arms around his knees, and taking deep breaths. He finally gives into the shaking, letting the shivers wrack his thin frame as he clutches at the tiny evidence bag. Ryu feels a pressure, behind his eyes, and they sting, but he blinks until it stops. 

He unfolds his hand and stares down at the necklace. He takes it out of the bag, tearing the bag on accident in his haste, and pulls out the snapped chain. He slips the pendant back on, and stares at where the chain is snapped.

He can fix it, Ryu thinks. 

He can’t fix anything else, but he can fix the necklace.

**

There are beginnings, Ryu thinks, and there are endings.

In Ryu’s life, there have been many beginnings. There was the first time he was allowed to travel by himself from place to place: the beginning of freedom. There’s the first time he met Hayato, winded and cold and full of confusion: the beginning of friendship. There’s the first time Hayato pressed him, too hard and too rough, against the wall in the hallway outside their abandoned classroom and kissed him, mouth sloppy and wet and inexperienced: the beginning of more-than-friendship. Maybe the beginning of love.

There have only been two endings. When Hayato walked up to him on the first day of junior high: The end of loneliness. 

The first day Ryu woke up in the morning, Hayato’s necklace as heavy as a ship’s anchor around his neck, with the knowledge Hayato wasn’t going to wake up next to him, and might never again: the end of happiness.

In the end, Ryu keeps living, day by day, step by step. And sometimes, he dreams, about new beginnings, and things that are endless.

**

“You’ll stop hanging out with that boy,” his father says. “You’ll fix your grades, and you’ll stop spending time with him.” He says it like a proclamation; like his word is law. In his line of work, often it is.

“No,” Ryu says, calmly, face devoid of anything that might give him away. “I won’t.”

His father looks up and frowns, studying his son in a way that Ryu wants to shy away from. It’s the look that, in the past, would have had Ryu straightening his shirt and smoothing any creases from his pants. It’s a look that would have had Ryu taking back his words.

“No son of mine will fail out of high school,” his father says as a warning. “Hanging out with rats is not the way to succeed in life. You have everything you could possibly need; all the tools to be one step ahead, and you’re throwing it away for nothing.”

Ryu’s chest tightens. _Nothing_ , he thinks. Hayato is not, and never will be nothing. 

Ryu bows low and excuses himself, without agreeing to anything or responding to his father’s infuriating words. Outside the house, it’s freezing, and Ryu was too impatient to take a coat—the only thing protecting him from the snow flurries is the thin black fabric of his new high school uniform jacket, with its big metal buttons. Ryu feels comfortable in it immediately, and doesn’t bother to take the tie out of its plastic. It’s a start. 

Ryu wants to see Hayato. `Where are you?`, he texts, and Hayato’s answer comes swiftly. 

`Wandering. What u need?`

`Park?`

`B there n 5`, comes the response, and Ryu shivers, but doesn’t want to go back for his coat. Doesn’t want to go inside his own house. Even his room feels like a prison of expensive things he didn’t earn and none of his friends will ever have; his mother’s weak attempts to buy him back into submission, like money has ever been something Ryu has craved.

Ryu sits down on a horse toy; the same one Hayato likes, and he almost smiles as it moves back and forth. The cold plastic easily chills his legs through the thin material of his pants, and Ryu shivers again. The snow is starting to fall a little faster. 

“Damn, Ryu, why don’t you have a coat on? It’s cold as hell!” Hayato shouts as he approaches, his own coat so big it dwarfs him. His father’s maybe. Ryu tries to wave but his fingers feel a little too frozen, so he settles for a weak nod. “You’ll die, idiot.”

“No I won’t,” Ryu replies, teeth chattering. “Didn’t want to go back for my coat.”

“Problems at home?” Hayato asks. He’s been having his own, lately; his temper, now that his mother has passed away, getting the better of him more often than not. 

“I’m being silly,” Ryu says.

Hayato walks around behind Ryu and pushes him forward, until the ears of the plastic horse dig into Ryu’s stomach and the toy animal rocks forward and back from Ryu’s unbalanced position. Ryu tries to turn around to look at Hayato, but then Hayato slides onto the horse behind him. The fit is too tight, and Hayato keeps his feet on the ground to steady them. 

There’s a rush of warmth as Hayato’s chest presses into his back, and Ryu shivers with something other than cold as Hayato’s hands fumble between them. Ryu hears the sound of a zipper as Hayato unzips his coat. “What’re you-“

“Just shut-up, dumbass. I’m not going to let you die of hypo… whatever-you-call-it. The thing where you get cold and then your arms fall off.” Ryu snorts, and then his body is racked with a full shake as it tries to warm itself up. 

Suddenly, Ryu is pulled backward again, and he can feel every bit of Hayato’s thin chest as Hayato puts his chin over Ryu’s shoulder and pulls the front of his coat around Ryu’s body. He zips them both in, and Ryu can’t move his arms, but it doesn’t matter, because he can feel Hayato’s heartbeat against his spine and Hayato’s rough breathing in his ear. “So tell me what happened,” Hayato whispers, and Ryu swallows and tries to breathe.

Hayato is so close, and his arms, that he’s pulled out of the sleeves to give Ryu more room, wrap around Ryu’s waist, fingers splayed flat across his belly. 

“My dad wants me not to be around you anymore. And I don’t know why, but the idea of him telling me what to do makes me so—” Ryu doesn’t know what word he wants, and all he can really focus on is the way Hayato’s hair tickles his cheek. Ryu feels like he can’t control his own body anymore, and as feeling sinks back in to his fingers, he wriggles until he can set his arms down along the outside of Hayato’s, palms resting against the backs of Hayato’s hands. 

“Angry?” Hayato finishes, sounding bemused. “It’s okay to feel things, Ryu,” Hayato says. “No matter how much you were raised to think it’s a waste of time to get angry, or sad, or too happy, it’s _normal_. It’s exciting. It’s part of being a person.”

Ryu doesn’t have a response; he still remembers what it was like, without Hayato, lonely and locked up and with nothing to lose or gain. He remembers going through every day doing exactly as he was told, and receiving nothing but a nod for his efforts at the end of the day. He remembers flinching on the subway at the simplest touch, just because he was so unused to the feeling that it scared him. So he doesn’t have a response, because he doesn’t really know what normal is. 

All he does have is the feeling of a star bursting into existence between his ribs, hot and fierce and way too much to handle, and he wonders if feeling _this_ is okay, too.

He stops noticing the snowfall as Hayato whispers simple things into his ear.

**

  
**Scenes not included in the story of Sleeping Beauty:**

_“She’ll be safe in there,” the king says to the queen. “She’ll sleep and sleep, and in the end, she’ll be safe in there.”_

_“But,” the queen says, “we’ll never see her again.”_

_“I’ll miss her too,” the king says, and they cry and cry because their family is broken forever, and even if they live to be a hundred, they’ll never see their daughter smile again._   


  
**Scenes not included in the abridged version of Ryu’s life:**

_”Ryu, it’s going to be okay,” Taku says, as he stands beside Ryu, both of them waiting in the hallway. It smells like blood, and antiseptic, and like fear, too—stale and strange._

_“But,” Ryu says, “We’ll never…”_

_“We don’t know anything yet,” Taku says, and the younger boy’s face is set, jaw pushed forward suddenly with striking resemblance to his older brother. “Just… stay calm.”_

_If Ryu remembered how to cry; or maybe, if he’d ever learned how… right now, he’d be crying, because even if he lives to be a hundred, there’s never been anything scarier than this._

**

The envelope from Taku sits on the table, and sometimes Ryu looks at it, not bothering to unseal it. 

What’s inside the envelope is a key, and a reminder, and all of Ryu’s fears; the things he’s not sure he’s ready to face.

He thinks about the envelope at work, too, and it distracts him. Not when he’s actually instructing, but in those quiet moments, where he’s sitting at his desk in the teachers’ office, looking for worksheets that will refresh his students on some of the concepts he taught last week. Doing things like that. That’s when his mind starts to wander, and Ryu thinks about his own cowardice, and about how cold he is, inside and outside.

Uchiyama pokes at Ryu’s face, and Ryu frowns. 

“You’re too thin,” Uchiyama says. “I could break you.”

“Any time you want to take it outside,” Ryu growls, forgetting, in his pensive mood, that that’s not part of the carefully crafted façade of a changed man that he wears at Kurogin. 

“Kitty has claws,” Uchiyama says, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes at Ryu. “What’s got you in a mood?”

“I’m not in a mood,” Ryu says shortly, blinking twice to focus his vision. 

Shiratori sighs romantically. “You looked lost in your thoughts,” she says. “Like a classical poet pondering the meaning of nature.” Ryu stares at her, unimpressed, until she flushes under his stare. “Not that you look old,” she clarifies, like that’s the problem. “Just noble. Or something.”

“Anyway,” Uchiyama says. “You look more a little like an orphaned kitten looking for its mother, to me.”

“Just thinking about the holidays,” Ryu lies, wetting dry lips and organizing the stacks of paper in front of him to give his idle hands something to do. 

The New Year’s holiday is fast approaching, and Ryu’s expected home. He wonders how the Yabuki family will spend the holidays. If the two of them that remain will cook instant ramen and laugh and tell stories. He wonders if they’ll huddle close and look at two empty seats and remember fuller holidays long past.

“I love New Year’s!” Shiratori says, clapping her hands excitedly. Her pink nail polish has a bit of sparkle, and it shimmers even in the pitiful yellowed fluorescent lighting of the teacher’s office. “We’ll eat soup and do _hatsumode_ and my sisters will all come home.” She leans forward on her desk, pressing her palms flat to the fake-wood. Her desk is nicer than Ryu’s, Ryu notices, but she has been here more than five years. She’s had time to decorate. “What about you, Odagiri- _sensei_?” 

“No,” Ryu says. “I’m not looking forward to it very much.”

Uchiyama frowns, and when Shiratori, flustered by Ryu’s curt answer, finds her way to the other side of the office to chat with another female teacher about something that has them both giggling and raising their fluffy pens in the air, Uchiyama leans forward, bending his body in half so he’s looking into Ryu’s face. 

“Bummed out because of your friend?” Uchiyama asks, and it’s impolite, and more than that, unexpected, so Ryu flinches.

“No,” Ryu says. “Either way, I’d have to go to my parents’ house for New Year’s.”

“I see,” Uchiyama says, and he straightens, putting his hands in his pockets. He looks a little dangerous like that, and Ryu suddenly notices a tiny scar behind his ear. It reminds him a bit of how Tsucchi used to look, when they were in high school. “For the record, Odagiri, if you don’t want people to remember your shady past, you probably shouldn’t offer someone a beatdown in the teachers’ office.”

“My bad,” Ryu replies, smiling a bit. “Next time I’ll politely ask you out into the hallway before I give you your choices.”

“Good call,” Uchiyama says, smirking. “Have a good holiday, Odagiri. I hope you gain lots of weight.” He awkwardly purses his mouth. “And you know, your friend and I… we had some mutual acquaintances. So if you—”

“Yeah,” Ryu says. “I’ll ‘tell him hi’,” Ryu says dryly. “Go away.”

“You’re certainly more interesting when you’re not hiding behind your over-starched shirts and your try-hard ties,” Uchiyama says. “See ya around, Odagiri.”

Uchiyama walks out the door, before he quickly steps back in. “Oh hey, I forgot,” Uchiyama says, and shuffles back over to his desk, rifling through the loose papers on his desk until he finds one that’s wrinkled up and a little gray. “I’ve got a present for you.”

“A crumpled up worksheet,” Ryu says dryly. “I’m thrilled.”

“Not just any worksheet,” Uchiyama says. “Kamiyama handed it to me in the hallway on my way in and asked me to give it to you.”

Ryu takes the paper gingerly and looks at it. It’s covered in eraser marks, and angry characters drawn too dark and heavy, like Kamiyama had deliberated on them over and over again. But every blank is filled in, and most of them, Ryu notes, are approaching correct. “He… turned in the assignment.”

“Congratulations, Odagiri,” Uchiyama says. “No one’s been able to get Kamiyama to turn anything in for over a year.” Uchiyama, who’s readjusting his scarf, slits eyes at Ryu smirking. “Look at you go.”

“Thanks,” Ryu says, still staring at the paper. A strange sense of accomplishment tingles in his gut.

 _You have to be a good teacher,_ Hayato had said. _Just to spite everyone who thinks you won’t be._

Ryu shakes his head to clear it, and his bangs fall into his face. He anxiously pushes them back, thinking irately that he needs a haircut, but he knows he won’t get one that would change the look of his hair too much; because Ryu likes recognizing himself in the mirror, even if the red has long since grown out, and Ryu wears his shirts buttoned up all the way now. 

He pats the paper on the desk, to reassure himself that it’s real, and he lets himself smile. 

“You have a good holiday, _sensei_ ,” Uchiyama salutes. “And I hope it passes… easily for you, whatever you’ve got going on at home.” He scratches at his hair carefully, so as not to muss the style. “I just… I hope you spend it well.” Uchiyama frowns, like he’s worried he’s said too much. “Later.”

“Have a good break,” Ryu says slowly, carefully. “You coming in tomorrow?” 

“No,” Uchiyama says. “I’ve got a long way to travel.” And then he’s gone, leaving Ryu alone in the office.

Ryu shrugs his coat on. He starts walking home, still preoccupied, and when he looks up, he’s at the riverbank. He hasn’t walked home this way in a long time. 

The river water looks clear. It’s strange, because it never did before. Ryu wonders if the water just reflects the unwavering clarity of his heart.

**

“Sometimes I wonder if this is the only place I can truly think,” Hayato says, and Ryu turns to look at him. His hair is fanned out across the grass, and it shines chestnut in the grass. Hayato had dyed it yesterday, while his mother watched with a mixture of consternation and amusement. 

“It _is_ nice here,” Ryu says, and he closes his eyes as the sun beats down on his face, warm rays tickling his lashes. The grass is soft, and the sound of the water rushing by is soft. There’s a road above them, frequented mostly by cyclists, and it makes Ryu feel like down here, they are hiding away from the world, just the two of them. “It’s like our secret place.” He feels a little silly, but it’s okay to be silly with Hayato.

“It’s not very secret,” Hayato laughs lightly, but it doesn’t sound like he disagrees. His laugh bubbles and froths around Ryu’s heart like rushing water, the way it always does, drowning him in all these feelings he can’t understand. 

“I know,” Ryu says.

He turns his head to the side to look at Hayato. Hayato’s puppy fat is melting away as the days pass, leaving strong cheekbones in its wake, and Ryu is mesmerized by the way the light plays across his features. “But it’s the only place where my thoughts don’t feel useless.”

“Useless?” Ryu questions, and Hayato laughs again.

“Yeah, like a waste of time. Here, I can think about anything, and everything, and I don’t feel stupid.”

“You can think about anything with me,” Ryu says, quietly. “I’m not going to think you’re stupid.”

“I know,” Hayato says, and they’re always like this, echoing each other’s words and actions like they’re two halves of a whole. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” Ryu says. “Aren’t I always here?”

“Yeah,” Hayato says. “It’s because you’re my best friend, you know?”

“I am,” Ryu says, and the water isn’t clear, and there’s a car overhead, but Ryu feels like he and Hayato are so removed from the world right now that no one can touch them. “This place is special.” Ryu’s uniform, black instead of navy, makes him feel different, but Hayato makes him feel like as much as things change, there are some things that will stay the same. An unchanging bit of a fairytale, Ryu thinks.

“It’s our place, huh?” Hayato says, and Ryu’s warm from more than the sun. He trains his eyes on the murky water, his palms feeling sweaty and his throat dry. “I like that. Just you and I.”

“Yes,” Ryu says, mumbling but loud enough to earn him a smile.

Their bodies leave imprints in the grass, and the moment, perfect and full, leaves an imprint in Ryu’s heart.

**

  
_”We do not remember days; we remember moments.”_  
\--Cesare Pavese, _The Burning Brand_

**

Hayato doesn’t scream, in Ryu’s nightmares. He grunts, biting his lip so hard it bleeds, taking hit after hit, and pressing his eyes shut so his attackers won’t have the advantage of seeing the pain glaze them over, or of seeing his fear. 

“Ryu,” he whispers, he always whispers, voice cracking, and Ryu’s stomach always clenches, balled up so tight it’s making a fist inside his abdomen.

It takes hours after he’s woken up for it to unfurl, leaving him limp and sweating atop his sheets, eyes clenched so tight no light can get through.

**

“Ryu,” Tsucchi says. “Hi.” He’s wearing a suit, tie knotted sloppily, hands in the pockets of oversized pants.

“Tsucchi,” Ryu replies. “What-“

“Getting coffee, same as you,” Tsucchi replies. “You look tired.”

“Having trouble sleeping.”

Tsucchi looks at him sympathetically, before schooling his face into disinterest. You can take the boy out of high school, Ryu thinks, but you can’t take the high school out of the boy. 

“It shows,” Tsucchi says. 

“Thanks,” Ryu replies. “It’s a big city, why’d I run into you?”

“I dunno,” Tsucchi says. “You’re just lucky, I guess.” He runs a hand through his short-cropped hair, and Ryu smiles.

“I guess,” he replies, and Tsucchi narrows his eyes, looking for sarcasm, and smiles back when he finds none.

“Seriously, Ryu, get some rest.” Tsucchi wraps his fingers around his coffee as the barista sets it on the counter. “It’s almost the holidays. Your students are draining the life out of you.”

“We were worse,” Ryu says.

“Yankumi never looked like you,” Tsucchi says, and Ryu winces. 

“It doesn’t have much to do with my students,” Ryu admits, and Tsucchi nods. 

“I figured.” He takes a sip of his coffee, and winces when it’s too hot. “Damn.” 

Ryu’s coffee arrives to the counter as well, and Ryu takes it gingerly. “I’d better go,” he says. “No students, but meetings all day.”

“Okay,” Tsucchi says. “Maybe you should—”

“I know,” Ryu says, and he thinks about the cream envelope sitting on the table, crinkled and unopened. “I know I should.”

“It’s New Year’s,” Tsuchhi adds. “Time for family.”

Time for family.

The coffee burns Ryu’s tongue.

**

Ryu never thought about his biggest fear, before. He’d never considered what it could be until it came to pass.

Now, Ryu’s biggest fear is the way he wakes up in the morning, and reaches beside him, and there’s no one there; Hayato isn’t there. The part that’s most terrifying is that it might be that way forever, and like when he was kid, Ryu is completely powerless to change it.

**


	3. Chapter 3

**

  
_The years roll by, but a hundred years to a steadfast heart, are but a day._

\--Queen Maleficent, _Sleeping Beauty, 1959_  


**

“Next year, we’ll be in high school,” Hayato says, sitting on the merry-go-round, arms wrapped around his knees. 

“We’ll finally be in the same class,” Ryu says with a dry laugh. He’s not sure how he feels about his grades having slipped to the point where he’s in the bottom-ranked class going into high school, but… Every moment he’s spent neglecting his homework has been spent out doing a different type of learning. 

With Hayato, Ryu’s learned how to skip stones across river water, or how to drink an apple drink from the convenience store in one gulp. He’s learned how to figure out if a stranger is dangerous or a potential friend. He’s learned how to make friends, in general. Ryu’s learned how to tell dirty jokes, and hell, how to tell clean ones, too. He’s learned about pop music and skipping classes, about the way the grass feels different beneath your back when you’re with a friend than it feels when you’re alone. 

Ryu’s learned how to laugh, and to him, that’s worth the looks of disappointment on his parents’ faces. Ryu’s learned how to breathe.

“It’s nice to sit here and know where I’ll be a year from now,” Hayato says, interrupting Ryu’s musings. “To sit here and know that there’s a steady path in front of me. That there’s something I’m supposed to be doing.”

“That’s rich,” Ryu says, laughing a bit. “Considering how much you hate being told what to do.” He walks over to the roundabout and wraps his hands around one of the metal bars. It’s cold against his skin. Ryu’d forgotten his gloves at school, so they’re already half-frozen anyway. He tugs at the bar, using the strength in his arms to send the merry-go-round spinning. Hayato spins in a circle, and every few seconds, his grinning face appears before Ryu, hair tousled and eyes sparkling.

Ryu doesn’t understand why the sight of Hayato makes him feel warm, but it does. When Hayato smiles, just like he’s smiling now, Ryu feels like his heart dives, or plummets, and it sends him reeling in unexpected ways. He’s never really felt anything like it before, but it’s not a bad feeling. 

It makes him want to move closer. Hayato doesn’t seem to mind.

“There’s a difference between being barked orders and knowing your next step, though,” Hayato defends, when the toy slows. “There’s a big difference.”

“I know,” Ryu says.

“Don’t you feel comforted, at all, that there’s no major decision to make yet? That we’ve got it all set up for us, that next year, we’ll go to high school, and be in the same class, and we’ll have uniforms, and classes, and things to do that we’ll blow off?”

“I guess,” Ryu says, and he sits down next to Hayato, and their knees touch, and Ryu likes the touch. “I mean, in a way, it’s a relief.”

“Yeah,” Hayato says. “A relief. Cause someday, it’ll be scary, and we’ll have to do things with no map, you know?”

“Yes,” Ryu agrees, and he lies back, and looks up at the sky, where the sun is hiding away, making it’s slow trek down into the horizon as night begins to fall. Hayato joins him, tiny, fluffy pieces of his hair sneaking into Ryu’s face and tickling his nose as they ponder the universe side by side. “I know.”

Ryu turns away from the sky and looks over at Hayato, whose face is illuminated in the dying light. The last bits of sunlight settle along the bridge of his nose and the profile of his lips, outlining him with a golden glow. He looks… 

Ryu’s heart is beating really fast. It’s strange, Ryu thinks, because he’s not nervous right now, or anxious. It’s just him and Hayato, and it’s here, with just the two of them, that Ryu feels the most relaxed. Between them, there’re no pretences, or lines that Ryu feels like he has to be wary of; there’s just the two of them. Best friends. 

That’s why it’s strange that Ryu’s heartbeat is so heavy he can feel it in his stomach, hammering like a rabbit’s. His throat is dry, too.

“You’re being very quiet,” Hayato says. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Ryu says, and it’s true. Next year, he and Hayato will be in the same class, breaking the same rules together, and how can there be anything wrong with that?

Thinking too far into the future scares Ryu. He tries to imagine what will happen when high school is over, and Ryu is left to figure out where he’s going and what he’s doing. 

He closes his eyes, and tries to picture it. 

“You’re thinking too hard,” Hayato says, and Ryu opens his eyes again, and Hayato has turned on his side to look at Ryu, one hand grabbing the metal bar that sticks up between them. The roundabout is still spinning slightly, just enough that Ryu feels like the Earth is moving. 

It might just be the way Hayato is smiling at him, softly, in a way that he never lets anyone else see that makes Ryu so imbalanced. 

A calm spreads through Ryu then. “I am,” Ryu says. “But I realized…” he draws off, letting the sentence disappear into the cold air. A chill from the metal is seeping in through his coat, making him shiver. 

“You realized?” Hayato prompts, the words turning into white mist between them thanks to December’s last breaths. “You realized what, exactly?” His bangs, too long to even think about passing any sort of regulations, fall across his face, and his lips stretch in a teasing grin. “Tell me your thoughts.”

He doesn’t demand, because he doesn’t have to. There aren’t secrets between them. That makes the feeling, the one he can’t identify, seem almost heady. “It doesn’t matter,” Ryu says.

“It does matter, if you’re thinking about it with that serious face,” Hayato says. “You only make that face when you’re thinking about your dad.”

“No,” Ryu says. “I mean… It doesn’t matter. That we’ll have to figure stuff out on our own, someday.”

Hayato pouts with confusion, wrinkling his nose and tilting his face even more toward Ryu. “Yeah?”

“It doesn’t matter because we’ll have each other,” Ryu says, and then he feels embarrassed, so he looks up at the sky again. It’s gone purple already. His mother will be expecting him home soon. It’s probably almost time for dinner. “I’m just being… Never mind.”

Ryu hates the cold, but he doesn’t really want to go anywhere right now. For some reason, this moment feels perfect. 

Hayato reaches toward him, and Ryu can see the movement of his hand out of the corner of his eye. Hayato’s hand snags the sleeve of his winter coat, and tugs just a little, asking for attention. Ryu swallows and looks back over at him.

“Obviously, we’ll do it together,” Hayato says, his own face a little bit flushed. “Did you think I’d go anywhere?”

Ryu laughs, because they’re both lying on a merry-go-round in an empty park in the middle of winter, looking at the sky and talking about the future. “No,” Ryu says, and the truth of it settles down into his bones. He knows Hayato will always be here. He knows it like he knows the grass is green and the sky is blue, and like the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. “I didn’t.”

“Good,” Hayato says gruffly, and then he sits up and blows his bangs out of his eyes. “I should do something cool with my hair.”

“You’ll probably do something stupid,” Ryu says. “And just think it’s cool.”

“Maybe,” Hayato says. “Will you still be my friend?”

“Of course,” Ryu replies, and the feeling, the one that’s been welling up in his chest, grows just a little bit heavier. 

“We should make a toast, or something,” Hayato says. He hops up from the merry-go-round and finds Ryu’s bag, digging inside until he finds the bottles of tea they’d bought at the convenience store on their way to the park. He tosses Ryu his, and Ryu catches it, easily. 

“To what?” Ryu asks. The bottle is cold in his already cold hands, and he really does have to head home. “I’ll be late.”

“I know, I know,” Hayato says. “This will only take a second.” He unscrews his bottle and Ryu copies him, and Hayato frowns. “This should be, like, booze or something.”

Ryu’s not sure about that, because they’re only fourteen, but Hayato’s had a different life than him. “What are we toasting to?”

“Someday, we’ll do this for real,” Hayato promises him solemnly. “But let’s toast. To another year of friendship.”

Ryu smiles, and then he laughs. “You’re so dumb.” But he feels a flush of pleasure flood his cheeks, combating against the numbness from the wind. 

“It’ll be like a tradition,” Hayato says. “Our tradition.” 

“Right,” Ryu says. 

“It’s an awesome idea,” Hayato says. 

“It is,” Ryu agrees, and as they bump their plastic bottles together, Ryu hopes it’s one they follow for many years to come.

**

Ryu doesn’t have any idea what he’s supposed to be doing.

There is no illuminated path through the brambles and thorns to where Briar Rose lies sleeping, and every path he sees leads him further away from Hayato, which is the last thing he wants.

**

Ryu rings in the New Year alone, watching the fireworks in South Korea on the television because he’s too lazy to change the channel to the replays of the fireworks in Yokohama, and drinking a fizzy bottle of champagne by himself.

When Ryu came back from Canada for the holiday the first year after he’d started studying abroad, he’d finally been twenty, old enough to go to the convenience store and buy a bottle of cheap, nasty champagne for he and Hayato to split. They’d sat by the riverbank and softly said ‘cheers’ to each other as the sky lit up, drinking from disposable paper cups with blue patterns around the lip that crinkled in Ryu’s too-tight grip. Hayato had turned flush and red, and Ryu had felt giddy and lightheaded himself, but it might have been more from the company than the drink.

This year, Hayato has left him to drink the bottle by himself; the same cheap brand they’d shared back then, under the fireworks in the winter air that was far too cold for outside celebrations.

As he takes sips of the champagne, poured into a glass because he’s supposed to be an adult now, Ryu muses that the cold out on the riverbank, tonight, would probably be unbearable.

**

  
_There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy._

\--Dante 

**

_Kisses and fingers that leave bruises on the outside heal the bruises on the inside, and Ryu doesn’t mind turning black and blue to feel a little more whole._

_Besides, Ryu thinks, sometimes, Hayato’s eyes are so vulnerable that Ryu forgets they’re supposed to be angry school boys wrestling for dominance in the dark, and only remembers the way his heart climbs up into his mouth and stays there._

_He wonders, when Hayato’s tongue slips between his lips, if Hayato can taste it._

**

When Hayato’s mom dies, Hayato punches a hole through the wall of his bedroom. He hits the drywall over and over again, until his knuckles leave blood smears on the white paint and the neighbors holler for quiet. Then Hayato slumps down to the floor and curls his arms around his knees, and Ryu’s never seen him look so soft.

“She was beautiful, right?” Hayato whispers, and Ryu can hear the sound of Hayato’s father out in the living room, stumbling around drunkenly as he searches for something, swearing loud and slurred. “My mom. She was really beautiful.”

“One of the loveliest women I’ve ever seen,” Ryu replies solemnly, and then Hayato’s crying, and Ryu doesn’t know what to do or to say. He just sits down stiffly next to Hayato, and Hayato lets his head rest in the hollow of Ryu’s neck, and Ryu goes stiff, because he’s not used to being touched. He ventures a hand up to Hayato’s hair, letting his fingers slide through the strands at the base of his neck, and he aches for his friend. Hayato’s pain is written in the line of his spine and in held-back sobs that shake him as his nose burrows into the skin at Ryu’s neck. “Inside and out.”

Somehow, it becomes an embrace, and the blood from Hayato’s knuckles smears across Ryu’s shirt, and Ryu doesn’t care; of course he doesn’t care, he just pulls Hayato closer. 

Hayato touches as easily as he draws breath, but for Ryu, it’s something new, something he can offer that he’s never been able to offer before, to anyone, and Hayato takes it. He pulls in and takes, and Ryu wants to give, and Hayato starts crying, silently. 

Ryu looks up, resting his chin on the top of Hayato’s head as Hayato wraps his arms around Ryu’s waist. Ryu blinks away the fuzziness in his own eyes.

Taku is standing in the doorway to his and Hayato’s bedroom, looking at his brother’s crumpled form with wide, watery eyes, and all Ryu can do is smile. Taku approaches gingerly, and one of Hayato’s arms snakes out and pulls him in, and Ryu has the both of them in his grip, thin arms spread as wide as they can go.

Later, when Taku has fallen asleep, Hayato whispers _thank you_ into the skin at Ryu’s neck.

“We’re family,” Ryu whispers back, and he can feel the soft smile Hayato’s lips make as the brush along his skin, and Ryu’s heart feels like it’s going to burst, and he doesn’t know what any of this means but it’s overwhelming, dragging him down deeper into the feelings that are slowly beginning to consume him.

He’s warm, like it’s not winter at all.

**

Loneliness has never been a distant stranger to Ryu. Loneliness, instead, was Ryu’s companion during his childhood, pressing in close and curling around him, and almost suffocating him with how tightly it held on, wrapping its arms around his torso and making it hard for him to breathe.

Ryu will hold on to his memories of happiness with a grip so tight loneliness will have to peel his fingers back one by one, bloody and bruised, to make him let go.

But Ryu doesn’t doubt loneliness’s determination.

**

Ryu wakes up in the morning just fine, and prepares himself to go to his parents’ house for the day. 

He arrives exactly on time, and his mother’s pleased smile seems as empty as he is. 

Rituals, and rites, and bowing, and incense left on gravestones… These are things Ryu does without thinking, as his mind wanders. 

Soon it’s dinner, and Ryu takes his place at the far end of the table as is customary. 

His father sits across from him, arms crossed. Ryu is on his knees, sitting traditionally as his father studies him. “How is your work going?”

A safe question. “Well,” Ryu says. “My students are all on track to graduate.” He doesn’t mention Kamiyama, because it might hit too close to home.

“You teach the worst class in the school. That’s an accomplishment.”

“It is,” Ryu says, and he hates the little flicker of pride in his chest. His father’s approval is rare, and Ryu doesn’t seek it—he’s been rebelling for so long that he doesn’t really remember what it feels like to crave his father’s endorsement. 

Hayato had given him self-validation, too. The necklace that hangs from his neck is heavy.

“Well done, Ryu. Perhaps you’ll make something of yourself, after all.”

Dinner is quiet, his mother’s cooking delicious as always, and his father’s stern gaze is resting on them both, watching. Ryu’s manners are impeccable, even if his knees hurt and his back is tight with tension. 

It’s only once every couple of months, Ryu reminds himself. Filial son is a pretense he only needs to play one day out of every sixty.

“Sending you to Canada was clearly the right decision,” his father says later, voice low and even. “Because you’re a teacher, now, which is more than I could have even expected, and that good-for-nothing friend of yours is—” His father’s tone is haughty, and void of any sort of emotion, and maybe Ryu’s on edge already, thinking about the envelope Taku had given him in his bag, and a tradition he’d once again missed, solitary champagne bottle consumed alone instead of together, but he can’t take it today. 

“I’ve got grading to do,” Ryu says, and rage is boiling inside him, like it used to when he was in high school; anger that’s fair, and powerful coming over him and making him feel the way Hayato had told him it was sometimes okay to feel.

Hayato taught him everything he knows about feeling; all the emotions that living here had slowly stolen from him, day by day until he’d started to feel like a shell instead of a person. “Tests, you know. That time of year.”

His father just grunts as Ryu stands. His nails are digging into the flesh of his palms, and it hurts, but he focuses on that instead of the rage.

Pain he can handle. Pain, he’s used to. Ryu can take a fist to the face better than most. 

“Until next time, Ryu,” his mother says, her voice placid as usual. She hurries to usher him out, like she knows he’s angry, though, and Ryu wonders if it shows on his face. “He just wants what’s best for you,” she whispers, as Ryu hurriedly shrugs on his coat, wrapping his scarf twice around his neck.

“No he doesn’t,” Ryu says. “He wants me to not shame him.” Ryu chokes on it. 

“It’s not you,” Ryu’s mother says. “He just never really liked the influence that the Yabuki boy had—”

“Hayato taught me how to fight,” Ryu says, and his mother nods.

“Exactly,” she starts. “And—”

“With more than just my fists and elbows,” Ryu continues. “Hayato taught me how to figure out the things I wanted. How to fight for myself, how to stand up for who I am.”

She’s silent, her hands clutching anxiously at the folds of her skirt. There’s a tiny streak of gray now, Ryu notices, at her temple, but her face looks the same. The same worry lines pulling at her mouth. 

“Hayato taught me what family should be,” Ryu says. “And for as much as you and father find me lacking…” Ryu opens the door and steps outside, adjusting his bag on his shoulder as he moves out. The wind is harsh on his face. “I find you lacking, too.”

 _I’ll be your family,_ Hayato had said. 

Maybe it’s time for Ryu to go see him.

**

_Black uniform with large metal buttons. He does them all up before he leaves the house, so he doesn’t have to listen to anyone talk about how he’s not wearing the uniform shirt. He’s got a bag, too, a black leather one, with books he’s barely opened inside._

_His cell phone is ringing. “Ryu, hurry up! I’m waiting around the corner.”_

_“Right, right,” Ryu says, as he hangs up. “Calm down, Hayato, I’m coming,” he whispers to himself, and laughs._

**

  
_“…If through this wicked witch’s trick, a spindle should your finger prick… a ray of hope there still may be in this, the gift I give to thee. Not in death, but just in sleep, this fateful prophecy you’ll keep.”_

\--Merryweather, _Sleeping Beauty, 1959_  


**

The hallways are dark. Ryu figures that’s perfectly reasonable, seeing as it’s ten o’clock at night on a holiday, but it still makes the whole place feel gloomy.

Then again, Ryu thinks, it’s always likely to feel gloomy, considering what this place houses.

Ryu approaches the front desk, digging in his leather bag for the envelope as he walks. He retrieves it just as he reaches the desk, and smiles awkwardly at the nurse. He glides his nail under the seal, the sticky adhesive parting easily, and retrieves the badge inside. 

“Hi,” he says tentatively, and the nurse smiles back. 

“And who are you here to see?” she asks kindly, and Ryu swallows. 

“Yabuki Hayato,” he says clearly, taking time to enunciate the syllables, wrapping his mouth around the name carefully, like he’s introducing a new topic to his class, or like he’s answering one of his father’s pointed questions. “He’s long-term care?”

The nurse’s eyes soften a bit at the waver Ryu can’t quite keep out of his voice. “Everyone here is, sir,” she says. “We are a long-term care facility.”

“Right,” Ryu says, and he rubs his arms anxiously, the badge gripped in his left hand tight enough to leave grooves, and his right hand clinging to the fabric of his coat. “Yes, I know that. I’m just.”

“First time here?” She asks, and Ryu licks his lips.

“Yes,” he says. “Not since the hospital—I haven’t been able to come since he was transferred here.” Haven’t been able. Right. In some ways, it’s completely true, but it sounds pathetic now. 

Not strong enough to come here. That’s more true, Ryu thinks. Far more true.

“Are you family?” She flips to a new page on her clipboard. “Because it’s not regular visiting hours. Only family can enter before or after our posted visiting hours.”

“Y-yes,” Ryu says. “I am.” He slides the badge across the desk, the plastic sticking a bit to his palm, and the nurse takes a cursory look at it. She marks his name down in her clipboard and nods. 

“Go ahead on up. Yabuki is on the third floor, room 311.”

“Thank you,” Ryu says, and he watches as the nurse files the badge without any more questions. He shifts his bag on his shoulder, and his hair is getting too long, he thinks, when it gets caught under the strap. It tickles where it’s curling at the ends along his neck.

The air is cold in the elevator, impersonal and stuffy. The long-term care facility doesn’t smell like a hospital, though. He can smell things like air-freshener and plants, and that makes it… better, in some ways. In other ways, it’s like a false comfort.

It’s a false comfort because when Ryu peeks his head into room 311, Ryu can still see the tubes and the wires and the machines, and unlike at the hospital, he’s not at all prepared for them.

When Ryu thinks about Hayato, (when he lets himself think about Hayato as he is now, that is), he imagines him peaceful; his hair spread out across a white pillow and cheeks flushed, like Sleeping Beauty.

The flowers blooming on Hayato’s windowsill are freshly watered and blooming despite the winter air, and they add to the illusion. 

But Hayato is not Sleeping Beauty. Hayato, with IVs in his arms, veins at the crooks of his elbows purple and bruised, lips chapped and dry, cheeks hallowed and chalky white… he’s not a character in a fairytale. His shirt reveals a glimpse of his shoulder and collar, and he’s pale there too, and far more frail and thin than any slumbering princess.

He doesn’t look asleep, at all.

He looks like skin and bones and empty moments.

Ryu stands in the doorway as he clenches his hands into fists, mouth pressed into a thin line. He stares at Hayato, watching the slow, barely noticeable rise and fall of his chest, and his own breathing slows to match. His eyes focus in on the lax position of Hayato’s fingers, the way they sit still on the smoothed sheets.

Hayato, before, never had smooth sheets, or still hands. Hayato, even in sleep, was restless and full of frenetic energy, grabbing fistfuls of his sheets and tangling the covers about his legs, or pushing them off the bed entirely as he tossed and turned. Sometimes Hayato would knot himself up so completely that in the morning, he’d be unable to escape, mouth parted and eyelids heavy with sleep as he wrestled to free himself from a trap of his own making.

But now, the sheets are smooth. And Ryu takes a step forward.

There’s a chair next to the bed. Ryu assumes that it has been put there by Taku, who Ryu knows stops by once or twice a week on his way home from school, and left there after he’s gone.

Ryu takes his seat.

“What am I doing?” Ryu asks, burying his face in his palms. Hayato doesn’t answer, and Ryu doesn’t really expect him to. 

He can imagine what Hayato would have said. _”Wasting your time, you idiot.”_ Or maybe _”At least you could have brought chocolate.”_

Ryu lifts his head and turns to look at Hayato’s face. His eyelashes are as dark as soot against the pale skin of his cheeks, and his hair is a tangled mess of waves, the roots thick and black where the chestnut has grown out. Ryu reaches up to touch it, fingers finding a home in the softer, untreated bits at the top. It’s sweaty and a bit damp, but that’s nothing new—Ryu has seen Hayato in every way, bruised and sweaty and bloody. 

None of those ways have hurt quite as much as this. The heart monitor is steady. _Beep. Beep. Beep._

Ryu takes his left hand and picks up Hayato’s left. The skin is smooth. It’s not supposed to be smooth. It’s supposed to be rough and scarred and a little bit green from fading impacts. Still, the weight of it is familiar in Ryu’s hand, and when he laces their fingers together, it still feels like two parts of a whole. 

“You weren’t supposed to leave me alone again,” Ryu says, and his words bounce off the walls, echoing in the empty room. He shivers. Hayato is silent.

Ryu imagines that Hayato’s fingers tighten just the slightest bit, but he knows that is nothing but fantasy.

**

  
_…Then the king and queen kissed their dear child, without waking her, and left the castle. Proclamations were issued, forbidding any approach to it, but these warnings were not needed, for within a quarter of an hour there grew up all round the park so vast a quantity of trees big and small, with interlacing brambles and thorns, that neither man nor beat could penetrate them. The tops alone of the castle towers could be seen, and these only from a distance._

\--Charles Perrault, _The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods_  


**

Ryu sighs and sets down his pen, linking his fingers to aid in a stretch, pushing his palms up to the sky as his back complains. Ryu chuckles a bit to himself, because if you’d asked him five years ago, he’d never have guessed he’d end up taking a test in a classroom far after high school graduation, trying to pass an exam that would certify him to spend the rest of his _life_ in a classroom. 

“That concludes the examination,” says the proctor, and Ryu sighs. The exam booklets are collected, and Ryu blinks slowly and carefully, wetting his lips. “You may now leave the room. You’ll be notified of the results in two weeks.”

Ryu fishes around for his mobile in his pocket, and he looks at the screen in confusion. Four missed calls? They’re all from the same number, an unrecognizable one. Ryu fingers the phone for a moment, then gets caught up in exchanging mindless pleasantries with other test-takes, pulling on his spring jacket and making sure his bag is closed, exiting the room in a crush of prospective teachers. 

He doesn’t remember the calls until he thinks to ring Hayato. The four, highlighted in red, stares back at him, like the phone itself is anxious, and Ryu bites his lip and scratches at his head, pressing the `return call` button.

“Hello?” he says, when the line picks up. “I received four calls from this number?”

“Hello,” is the reply. “This is the police station. This was the last number dialed on our victim’s phone.”

The word victim rings in Ryu’s head like an alarm siren, loud and angry and tough to comprehend. His brain is short-circuiting, and he’s exhausted, and the pieces are starting to come together in a way that chills Ryu down to his bones. “Victim?” Ryu sighs and pulls his bag up, readjusting its weight on his shoulder. “I’ve just gotten out of an exam, what do you mean victim?”

“This phone was found in the pocket of an unidentified young man about three hours ago, sir. I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the local poli—”

“In his pocket?” Ryu says. “Why didn’t he just give it to you?” Hysteria is crawling along his ribs, in a slow creep toward his heart. “Is he in trouble? Is he okay?”

“Sir, we really just need you to—”

“Is he _okay_?” Ryu presses, and the person on the other end of the line, a man, maybe a secretary or a junior officer, Ryu’s not sure, sounds flustered as he stammers out a response. 

“Sir, please come in to the station, I can’t explain this—”

“Just tell me he’s okay!” Ryu yells, and people walking past him on the street are staring and Ryu doesn’t care. His whole focus is on the scratchy, timid voice telling him nothing on the other end of the line. “Tell me that Hayato is okay.”

“Hayato,” the man says frantically, to someone who isn’t Ryu. “His name is Hayato.” He clears his throat. “We don’t know, yet, he was taken to the—” His voice cuts off, and a steadier voice takes control of the conversation. 

“Sir, please report immediately to the station.” This voice is commanding, and somehow forces Ryu into a calm he is in no way ready to feel. 

“Please, tell me something, _anything_ ,” Ryu says, and some other day, he’d be worried about how his voice sounds wavering and weak. He’d be worried about Hayato ribbing him about how he sounds like a punk instead of like a thug, and he’d be worried about giving too much away. But right now, all he can think about what isn’t being said. What he isn’t being told, and four missed calls and a request to come to the station.

All he can think about is how they didn’t even know Hayato’s name… Maybe because Hayato couldn’t give it to them.

“It’s not good,” the man says finally, still in that steady voice. “I’m going to need you to come on down to the station, now, son.”

“I’ll be right there,” Ryu replies, and he can barely end the call because his hands are shaking too fiercely.

**

Sometimes, in his dreams, Ryu tells Hayato that his job doesn’t matter. He laughs when Hayato says he’s thinking of quitting, and says _”Why would you do a dumb thing like that?”_ and then Hayato huffs a bit on the other end of the line. 

_”You’re right,”_ Hayato always replies. _“I guess there isn’t anything wrong with this one.”_

And Ryu will ignore the tremble in Hayato’s voice and the way that Hayato sometimes comes home looking so weary and sad that Ryu wants to hold him close and never let him go.

Sometimes, in his dreams, Ryu comes back from his exam and Hayato’s waiting outside his apartment with convenience store sushi and a roguish smile, and Ryu opens the door and lets him inside.

Sometimes, Ryu wakes up, and his twin bed is cold, and Ryu is alone.

**

  
But I won’t follow you  
Into the rabbit hole  
I said I would  
But then I saw  
Your shivered bones  
They didn’t want me to  
\--Birdy, _Terrible Love_  


**

Ryu is sitting in the park when his phone rings. His elbow hits the bar of the roundabout painfully as he grabs his phone from his bag, shifting past his keys for the mobile. “It’s late,” Ryu says, because he knows it’s Take.

“No, it’s _early_ ,” Take says. “It’s seven am. Sorry to call at this hour.” Ryu sighs, and it comes out a little quavering, because he’s cold. “Are you outside?” Take’s voice sounds a little incredulous. 

“Yes,” Ryu says. “Definitely too cold to be outside.”

“Shouldn’t you be with your parents?” Take asks, and then Ryu can hear the hitch in his breath. “I mean, I thought you’d be—”

“We had a difference of opinion, as usual,” Ryu says. “And I ran away, as usual.”

“It’s not running away,” Take says. “I’m the one who runs away.” He laughs a bit. “I’m sure you recall…?” 

“I think we’ve all done our fair share of running,” Ryu says. “Yankumi made us promise not to fight anymore, remember?” He remembers Hayato coming up with one of his patented Formations just to initiate an escape. Ryu remembers things like that all the time, usually when he isn’t distracted enough.

“Okay, okay, anyway. So you fled your parents’ home on New Year’s Day. Why aren’t you at your flat, then, wrapped in thirty blankets? _Asleep?_ ” Take’s voice is teasing again.

Take is his closet friend besides Hayato, because Take knows when to back off and when to dig deeper. 

“I went to see Hayato today. Yesterday. Whatever,” Ryu answers, feeling candid for reasons he doesn’t understand. Or maybe he just feels so raw he can’t bother to put up the face he’d perfected over the course of high school: his serious, no-nonsense, nothing hurts face. Today, Ryu’s run out of the energy to pretend. “I needed to walk around. You know, think.”

“Oh,” Take says. Ryu can practically hear him thinking on the other end of the line, can imagine his big eyes wide with surprise and his teeth catching his lip. “I see.”

“Yes,” Ryu says. “Feeling cold is better than feeling nothing.” Nothing, in this case, means _everything_ , they both know that. The cold numbs more than Ryu’s body, it also numbs his heart. He puts his feet on the ground and pushes the merry-go-round into a slow spin. “Why’d you call?”

“Right,” Take says, and he hesitates. “Look, Ryu… I know it’s early, or I guess, for you, late, but since you’re already out…”

“What do you need?” Ryu says, immediately alert. There’s something scared in Take’s voice, like there’s so much he wants to say but he’s afraid to say it. 

“Tsucchi and I are headed to the café… you know, the one we hung out at back in the day,” Take says. “Can you come?”

“Sure,” Ryu says. “Not like my parents are wondering where I am.”

“Okay,” Take says, and then there’s that pause again, and it’s a little frustrating because Ryu just wants to know. “See you soon.”

“Yes,” Ryu says, and he ends the call, standing up from the roundabout, feeling just a bit dizzy. 

It’s a short walk to the café from the park; it was always a part of their usual rounds, especially Ryu and Hayato. It only takes about five minutes to get there, and the worst part of the walk is the slush that’s started to freeze. The walkways are a bit slippery and Ryu slides a bit, because he’s still wearing his dress shoes and a pair of dress slacks that aren’t appropriate for the coldest bit of winter. The sun is rising, and Ryu’s tired eyes admire the beauty of it, in a detached way. The early rays of light are warm on his cheeks.

Take and Tsucchi are waiting for him, somber expressions on their faces. 

_“Who died?”_ Ryu wants to joke, but last time, it had been Ryu sitting on a plush seat, and Hayato in the hospital, and that makes the joke significantly less funny. “What happened?”

“One of them is getting out in a couple months,” Tsucchi says, eyes narrowed as he studies his coffee. “I’ve still got contacts, you know. People who didn’t manage to make it out of the seedier side of the workforce.”

“Getting out,” Ryu repeats darkly, and Tsucchi nods while Take trains his eyes on his drink.

“It’s been less than two years, and one of them is getting out.”

“Which one?” Ryu asks, throat tight. He remembers them all. All seven of them, with their unrepentant faces and hateful eyes. Ryu remembers each and every one of their faces in excruciating detail. 

Seven armed men versus an unarmed Hayato. A Hayato who was just trying to move on with his life. A Hayato who hadn’t attacked them. A Hayato who was coming home to Ryu. 

“The one with the rich mom who hates him,” Tsucchi says. “And the fast-talking lawyer.”

“He got an appeal,” Take says. “They said he was not as involved. More of an accessory; watching not helping.”

Shinazaki. That was his name. Shinazaki.

“Bullshit,” Ryu says. “All the others said he was the ring-leader, the one who didn’t stop after they made their point—” Ryu realizes he’s raised his voice too loud for seven in the morning. He bites down the noise, and bites down the anger, too. Ryu’s too old now, to give into impulses, even if, thanks to Hayato, he knows it’s okay to feel them. 

“We know,” Tsucchi says. “You’re preaching to the choir, here, Ryu. It’s not right.”

“But we just thought you ought to know. And I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

“I appreciate that,” Ryu admits. 

“Also, we…” Take steels himself. “We don’t want you to go after him.”

Ryu closes his eyes and examines every inch of the man’s face in his mind’s eye. Remembers the way a tiny smile had pulled at the corner of his lips even as he faced a jury of people and mountains of evidence. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because,” Tsucchi says. “You’ve got a life now. We’ve all got lives now—” 

Ryu’s eyes fly open.

“Not Hayato,” Ryu says. “Hayato doesn’t have a life now.” Tsucchi quiets, and takes a swig of his coffee. Take winces. 

“No,” Take says. “But you do.” Ryu examines his fingernails. 

They’re smooth, and filed. His hands are unmarked, except for a bit of black ink that has yet to wear away from two days ago. His suit is tailored, and he’s not worried he’ll rip it in an altercation. Long, black bangs fall into his face and obscure his vision, but he usually parts his hair and pushes them neatly to the side.

Ryu isn’t living at all. 

“Do I?” Maybe, all those things would be okay if Hayato were ironing holes into some of those starched button-downs, or Hayato’s fingers occasionally made their way into his hair to mess it up, but… Ryu looks up at Take, and Take is looking at him, eyes wide. Tsucchi is still looking down at his drink, jaw tight. “Do I, really?”

Take doesn’t back down. “You once took a fall for me, Ryu. You’re a loyal friend, even when it hurts you.” Ryu isn’t expecting this attack, and he clenches his hands into fists as he stares at Take. “But it’s not just you, you know. You’re a teacher now. And you’ve got that student… The one who’s on the edge of not graduating? Him. Do you think his teacher getting carted off to jail for murdering some guy over a grudge sends the right message?”

“I don’t care,” Ryu hisses, and Take frowns. “Hayato didn’t deserve—“ Ryu’s eyes prickle and he blinks twice.

“You do care,” Take says, low and calm, and Ryu’s anger, a lit ember in his chest, dies down just a little. “You’ve always cared. Hayato’s the hot-headed one, and you’re the thinker. Think, Ryu.”

“I am,” Ryu says, and he exhales, letting the flames die down and his fists loosen. “I am thinking. It’s the thinking that makes me angry. This guy, back on the street. Catching more guys out of high school like he caught Hayato, not letting them leave when they realize that it’s no good.”

“Then you’ve got to teach those kids, Ryu. Those are your kids now.”

“I’m not Yankumi,” Ryu says. “I’ll never be Yankumi.”

“No one’s telling you to be Yankumi,” Tsucchi says. “We’re telling you to be Ryu. And to not get arrested.”

“Hyuuga’s not part of your intervention?” Ryu mutters, ordering a coffee with a lift of his eyebrow. 

“He’s out of town,” Tsucchi admits, a bit sheepish, and Take laughs, seeing that the danger has passed. “He’s here in spirit. And this was sort of last-minute. I only found out last night.”

“Thanks,” Ryu says, and he’s thanking them for all sorts of things. Tsucchi nods, and Take smiles, teeth peeking out like he hasn’t aged a day in five years. “For, you know, stuff.” A coffee finds its way into his hands from a smiling waitress, and Ryu nods at her.

“Yeah,” Tsucchi says. “Don’t mention it.” He scratches at his eyebrow. “Really.”

Ryu closes his eyes again, coffee now warm between his palms. This time, behind his eyes he sees Kamiyama, fresh cut from a knife marring the side of his face, and a familiar determination wells up in him. _No more Hayatos,_ Ryu thinks. _No one else under my watch getting hurt._

“I’ve got faith in you, Ryu,” Take says, later, when Ryu’s visibly drooping from the exhaustion of two emotionally draining days and a night without sleep. 

“I’m still angry,” Ryu says. “So angry.”

“Good,” Take says. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you feel anything but sad. Maybe now you can start to _live_.”

Ryu recalls the feeling of Hayato’s still fingers between his own, and tries not to fall to pieces. Instead he wraps his hand around the pendant that hangs from his neck on a chain that’s been repaired.

Take’s staring at him. “I’m still not used to the black hair. I know it’s been a couple of years, but it’s strange to see you like this.”

“Not all of us can keep the remnants of high school rebellion,” Ryu says, eyeing Take’s blonde and black hair, still spiked up and way too loud. “I’m an authority figure.”

“Or you’ve just lost yourself,” Take says. “Lost track of who you are.” He eyes Ryu’s black hair like it’s an unwelcome stranger.

“It’s not that,” Ryu says, because there exists a Ryu without Hayato, but the world through that Ryu’s eyes seems to be mostly in shades of grey. “It’s just the red is too bright.”

The red reminds him of Hayato, and there’s enough doing that without remembering the way the strands of his hair looked across Hayato’s pale skin in the morning every time he looks in the mirror.

**

“You’d look awesome with red hair,” Hayato says, as Ryu watches him carefully lean forward on the sink, carefully holding the tiny bleached section of his hair away from the rest. “Like, it’d be really cool.”

“My parents would kill me,” Ryu says, and Hayato grins, eyes sparkling with mischief. 

“So?” Hayato says. “The color of your hair doesn’t have much to do with how you do in school.” Hayato nudges Ryu with his toes, slipping them up Ryu’s uniform pants until they’re cold on his shins. “Plus the ladies will love it.”

Ryu looks at the container of bleaching gel sitting on the edge of the sink counter. “You really think it would look good?” Ryu asks, and Hayato nods enthusiastically. 

“Yeah, I think you’d look great.” And Ryu is shrugging off his shirt and putting his head under the faucet in the tub, letting the water paste his hair down to his neck and slide in warm rivulets down his collarbones. 

“Then go ahead,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s plastic-gloved hands are sinking into his hair, and Ryu thinks that it doesn’t really matter whether the ladies will really love it or not. All that matters is what Hayato thinks, in the end, because Hayato is more important than any girl who might be impressed with a bit of hair-dye and an undone collar.

Hayato is more important than anyone. Ryu barely hears his mother’s shocked gasp later that night, because he’s remembering Hayato’s fingers along his scalp, stealing Ryu’s sanity as he massages Ryu’s scalp, washing out the bleach.

**

Ryu’s exam results come in the mail, and for some reason, when he opens them up and looks at them, all he can see is Hayato, wishing him luck on the exam and making fun of his boring black tie.

He’s passed them, but he can’t find the will to celebrate.

**

“Did you really get into fights, in high school?” Kamiyama asks, sitting on the edge of one of the desks. Ryu hasn’t held him after class, he’s here of his own free will. Asking Ryu about times he’d rather forget.

Still, Ryu had mentioned it first. “Yes,” Ryu says. “My best friend and I were the resident bad boys of Kurogin.”

“Really?” Kamiyama asks, and he looks Ryu up and down, as if Ryu’s boring suit and slight frame make him an unlikely gang member. Ryu wants to snort and tell him he was one of the strongest, and that bad behavior comes in all shapes and sizes. 

“Yes,” Ryu says, letting a little danger into his voice that has Kamiyama’s eyes widening. “But I don’t fight anymore.”

“Why’d you stop?” Kamiyama asks. “What made you decide to stop, I mean?”

“It was no longer what I needed to do to have the things I wanted,” Ryu answers, and he thinks about Hayato, with an angry grimace and a split lip, kicking at a guy from an enemy school while Ryu took on another guy twice his size. 

“What did you want?” Kamiyama asks, then bites his lip as he realizes how personal a question it is. Ryu sighs, a rush of air from his nose.

“I wanted to be with the person I loved,” Ryu says, and Kamiyama looks surprised he answered, and doesn’t press for more.

“So if you hadn’t… wanted that, would you be fighting now? Working for a gang?”

Ryu smirks. “No,” Ryu says. “If I hadn’t wanted that, I wouldn’t have been fighting in the first place.”

**

Hayato starts getting into fights during their first year of high school. Without his mom to take care of, Hayato’s got too much free time and plenty of extra rage—he begins talking in ways he knows will start fights, and then backing them up with his fists. 

It begins with these tiny incidents. Scuffed shoes and scratches along Hayato’s knuckles that might mean nothing at all, if it weren’t for the strange absences, or Hayato’s hushed whispers to Tsuchiya. During class. Ryu keeps his eyes straight ahead and tries not to worry. He tries not to feel threatened, too.

At first, Hayato leaves Ryu out of it, whatever he’s doing, but Ryu starts noticing, more and more, the welts and cuts, and the way Hayato’s jaw juts stubbornly forward when Ryu questions where he’s been. Ryu’s confused, because he’s gone from knowing everything about Hayato to knowing not enough: these days, it’s Tsucchi Hayato disappears with at the end of the day.

“It’s none of your business,” Hayato says, when Ryu runs into him on his way home, after going with Take to the comic book store so Take could surreptitiously pick up the latest volume of _Revolutionary Girl Utena_ without Tsucchi knowing he reads it. 

“Yes, it is,” Ryu counters, and he notices Hayato’s walking with a bit of a limp.

“You’re in enough trouble with your folks over me,” Hayato says. “You don’t need to know about this.”

Ryu sighs, and Hayato’s tall enough now (taller than Ryu, at least) that it’s easy for Ryu to wrap Hayato’s right arm over his shoulders to help bear Hayato’s weight. “It’s you. Of course I need to know.”

“Of course,” Hayato mimics, a frown pulling at his face. “You’re nosy.”

“I’m your best friend,” Ryu corrects. “Or I was.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Hayato says gruffly, wincing as he walks. “Who else would it be?”

“Tsuchiya,” Ryu retorts, and this time Hayato’s wince isn’t from pain. 

“It’s just… he understands.”

“I could understand,” Ryu says, and he guides Hayato into the lobby of his building. Holding the door open as Hayato hops inside, and then slipping back under his arm, wrapping his own arm around Hayato’s waist. It’s thicker and stronger than he remembers. He presses the elevator button. 

“I mean, he knows what it’s like to feel angry,” Hayato says. 

“So do I,” Ryu says. “Just because I don’t pick fights, or scream it aloud… You know better. You know I get angry too.”

“Not…” Hayato swallows. Ryu watches his adam’s apple bob, the skin of his throat smudged dark with dirt. “Not like this.”

He’s still so beautiful, Ryu thinks. Even now, when Ryu feels like Hayato is so distant.

Ryu leads Hayato into the kitchen, making him sit on the countertop next to the sink as he gently lifts Hayato’s leg to investigate his ankle. It’s swollen and bright red. “How’d you do this?”

“You should see the other guy,” Hayato says, throwing his head back. His hair hangs behind him in a fall of tangles. The blond streak looks rebellious among all the chestnut strands, and Ryu licks his lips.

“Probably sprained,” Ryu says, releasing the limb and squeezing up onto the counter next to Hayato. Hayato scooches a bit to make room. “You’re going to have trouble walking on it.”

“Oh well,” Hayato says, like it’s no big deal. Ryu guesses it isn’t.

“I’ll help,” Ryu says. “With the walking. I’ll carry your books, or something.”

Hayato snorts. “My books? Who are you talking to?”

Ryu offers a half-smile. “I guess,” he says, biting his lip, “that you’d better teach me how to throw a punch.”

Hayato stills, and then he slowly relaxes, offering Ryu a slow smile. “Rich boys. They never know how to do anything useful.”

“Yes,” Ryu says. “That’s why I found you.”

“You’re just using me?” Hayato teases. “Rude.”

“No,” Ryu says, looking at Hayato seriously. “You’ve taught me so much.”

Hayato turns away, and Ryu’s eyes stay trained on Hayato’s jaw, which flexes like Hayato’s not sure how to respond. “You act like you’re the only person that’s learned stuff,” Hayato says. “Me too, you know.” Hayato still doesn’t look at Ryu, but he moves one hand over so it bumps Ryu, extending his pinky finger so it links around Ryu’s.

He doesn’t do anything else, and Ryu wonders if he’s waiting to see if Ryu will pull away. Ryu just tugs a little, curling his own pinky to secure the link.

How Ryu feels about Hayato is starting to become, Ryu thinks, just a little bit unbearable.


	4. Chapter 4

**

“You’re here,” Taku says, and Ryu looks up from his grading to see Taku standing in the doorway.

“Yes,” Ryu says. “I am.”

“I mean, I knew you’d come before, because the nurse asked me if I knew you, last week, but… Seeing you here is weird.”

“Good weird or bad weird?” Ryu asks, and Taku shrugs.

“Good weird. Hayato was probably bitching inside his head about how you never come to visit.”

“Probably,” Ryu says, because the fantasy that inside, Hayato is awake, is one he won’t spoil for Taku. Ryu wishes he, himself, could believe something like that. 

He can’t, but it’s nice, so nice, that Taku can.

“Take says,” Taku starts, after a moment of silence that seems longer than it is. “Take says that Shinazaki guy is getting out.”

“Yes,” Ryu replies. And Taku clenches his fists. “He is.”

“He smiled. When they were sentencing him, he smiled. He’d stolen someone’s life because they didn’t want to play by his rules anymore, and he smiled.”

Ryu wants to wrap his arms around Taku, to hold him until he stops shaking, but Ryu’s grown too rigid for that, and Taku’s grown too proud. “Yes,” Ryu says, rage curling like a viper in his stomach, poisonous and slick and dangerous. “He did.”

“How can they let him out?” Taku asks. “What’s to stop him from doing this to someone else?”

“Maybe he’s really reformed,” Ryu says, recalling the newspaper article about Shinazaki’s release that he’d found online. He wonders if Taku can hear the disbelief in his voice.

“Yeah right,” Taku replies, and Ryu watches as he fills a cup with water at the sink. Then he sets the cup down and goes over to his backpack and pulls out a small case. A shaving kit. He unzips it and pulls out a container of cheap shaving foam with a smile. “Hayato would have a fit if he woke up with a beard.”

Taku takes a washcloth and wets the beginnings of a beard growing on Hayato’s face, and lathers it up with foam using his left hand. He reaches into the case and pulls out a razor—it’s Hayato’s razor, Ryu sees, the same one he’s had for as long as Ryu can remember. The blades look new, but the handle is just as worn down. 

“Let me,” Ryu says, and he can recall, as he slides the blade along the grain, the one other time he’s done this for Hayato.

 

_”My wrist is sprained,” Hayato complained. “That guy was so buff he actually sprained my wrist.”_

_“My delicate flower,” Ryu had said back, and Hayato had kicked at him vaguely. Ryu sidestepped it and laughed, and Hayato had glowered at him before taking his left hand and feeling along the stubble._

_“I needed to shave, too,” Hayato whined, and Ryu smiled._

_“I’ll help,” Ryu said, and Hayato’s face had turned curiously. “Let’s go, before I have to go home.”_

_He’d pressed Hayato back against the sink, and Hayato’s hands found purchase on his hips as Ryu had slowly pulled the razor down his cheek, careful not to nick Hayato’s sensitive skin. “Thanks,” Hayato had breathed, and he was so close Ryu struggled to find air._

_“What are friends for?” Ryu had asked, and somehow managed to keep his hands from shaking as badly as his insides._

 

“Are you okay?” Taku says, and it rouses Ryu from his reverie. 

“Yes,” Ryu says, and he looks down, and all that’s left is the space between Hayato’s upper lip and nose. 

 

_”Maybe I should grow a mustache,” Hayato joked, as Ryu frowned and debated how to approach the tricky area._

_“Maybe you should stop talking before I miss and cut off your tongue,” Ryu replied, and Hayato had beamed._

_“It’d probably tickle when I kissed someone,” Hayato mused, and Ryu’s palms grew sweaty._

_“Who are you going to kiss, anyway,” Ryu had teased weakly, and Hayato had flushed a dark red._

_“I’ve got people I want to kiss,” Hayato defended, but then he’d pressed his mouth flat to make it easy for Ryu to shave._

 

“All done,” Ryu says, and there’s shaving foam on his hands and a burning in his eyes that’s got nothing to do with anything.

“You do a better job than I do,” Taku says, as he wipes away the foam with the wet washcloth. “More neat.”

“Experience,” Ryu says. The truth is, no one knows Hayato’s face better than Ryu.

**

  
_Night-dreams trace on Memory’s wall_  
Shadows of the thoughts of day,  
And thy fortunes, as they fall,  
The bias of the will betray. 

\--Ralph Waldo Emerson, _Memory_

**

Hayato’s always had a more expressive face than Ryu. Ryu recalls, clearly, the way Hayato’s face could flicker through hundreds of emotions in a matter of seconds.

It’s always made Hayato easier for Ryu to read, because Hayato is like shattered glass, the light reflecting off all the pieces in patterns that should make Ryu dizzy but only make him marvel at the colors.

He memorizes each refraction and wonders if there are even words to express the variance. 

There have only been two times Hayato’s face has gone still; unreadable and blank to Ryu’s practiced eye.

Both times, Ryu’s felt a tiny death in his chest at the loss.

**

“What’s wrong?” Ryu asks, and Take is looking fragile standing in front of him, head low. “Why did you need to speak to me alone?”

“Ryu… I have a problem.” Take sounds terrified, and that makes Ryu pay closer attention.

“Tell me,” he says, because Take… Take is not Hayato, but he’s important too, soft in ways Ryu almost admires, because Take feels so many things without remorse.

“We’re all going to be expelled,” Take says miserably. “I thought it wouldn’t matter to me this much, but it does. My mother…”

Ryu studies his nails. They’re cut as short as he could make them, below the bed of the nail to avoid self-injury. His fingers are swollen at the knuckles from yesterday’s fight. “What about her?” Ryu asks. “Is she upset with you?”

“No,” Take says miserably. “She’s _proud_ of me. Because I might graduate.”

_Oh_ , Ryu thinks, and he studies Take a little more carefully. Take’s shoulders are hunched in defeat, and fear, and resignation, and Ryu hurts to see him like this. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Ryu?” Take asks, and his eyes go wide. “What are you going to do, Ryu?”

“None of your business,” Ryu says, and his gut is churning, because it comes to him, then, what he should do.

“But Hayato…” Take starts, and Ryu can feel his own eyes narrowing, and Take stops, swallowing harshly. “Thanks.”

Ryu nods, and tries not to think about the fact that Hayato, who is made up of pride and passion and impulse, might never forgive him.

It’s better, he thinks, that he help them all, in his own way. It’s better that he doesn’t think about how Hayato’s face will look betrayed and disbelieving, and instead focus on the fact that Hayato and Take and Hyuuga and Tsucchi will all be okay. Will all be safe.

It’s only Ryu who will suffer, like this. It’s only Ryu who faces a dark tunnel. 

Later that night, Ryu thinks about the way his heart skips beats when Hayato smiles, and the way the world slows down when they lie on the grass and breathe together. He thinks about the way that Hayato moves, and Ryu moves with him, like they’re both branches on the same tree, blown in a careless wind. He thinks about the way that no matter how cold the winter is, next to Hayato he is warm. He thinks about these things, and wonders why he’s so afraid.

**

“You’re always touching it,” Take says. “That necklace.”

“It’s Hayato’s,” Ryu says. “It reminds me of him.”

Take is staring at him. Ryu can feel it, even if he refuses to turn away from his ramen to acknowledge it. He’s used to much harsher staring, anyway. This is nothing. 

“Ryu…” Ryu ignores him, taking bite of beef and closing his eyes at the rich taste. It warms him from the inside. His left hand seeks the necklace, pulling it out from under his shirt and letting it hang in front of him, thumb rubbing along the pendant. “Why does it look so familiar?”

“Hmm?” Ryu asks, finally looking at Take, whose eyes are trained on Ryu’s necklace. 

“The pendant I mean,” Take says. “It looks so familiar.”

“Does it?” Ryu asks, vaguely, setting his chopsticks on the table. “Maybe because it’s Hayato’s.”

“No,” Take says. “That’s not it.” He taps his finger on his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder.”

“Don’t think about it too hard,” Ryu jokes. “It’s not that important.”

 

_”I’ll hold on to this,” Hayato had said. “Until you come back.”_

 

“You’re so hard to read, usually,” Take says. “But I can see things, now.”

“It’s too hard,” Ryu says, stirring the remaining noodles in his bowl. “To pretend these days.”

“I’m sorry,” Take says, and he stirs his ramen broth with anxious chopsticks.

“Me too,” Ryu says, and he wishes he could bow down now, to someone, anyone, and they’d all be all right.

**

They laugh at him, when he bows down. “I’m sorry,” he says, and the five guys from Ara just laugh and laugh and laugh.

Ryu wishes they wouldn’t, because even if what he’s doing is shameful, worse is what Hayato will do to him later. Say to him later. 

In comparison, this is nothing, but the laughter sounds a little like the laughter Ryu can hear inside his own head.

On the outside, Ryu keeps his face impassive.

**

Sometimes, Ryu dreams of pressing Hayato into the wall, hard enough to hurt. He dreams of Hayato whining as he bites down into his shoulder then soothes the mark with his tongue. He dreams of the sound of rain falling outside as he falls over and over again, sweat along his back, sweat along his thighs.

He dreams of Hayato, eyes clenched shut, mouth parted, bangs stuck to his forehead, and he whispers _don’t go_ like those are magic words that will keep both of them here, in this space between fiction and reality, where it doesn’t hurt to breathe.

**

“How could you?” Hayato hisses, voice rumbling in his lower register, eyes like ice. “How could you just… Don’t you have any pride?”

“Of course I do,” Ryu replies quietly, eyes on the ground, thumbs hooked on his belt to keep his hands from trembling. His mouth hurts, and there’s blood in it, and on it, from where he and Hayato have worked things out the old-fashioned way. “Of _course_ I do.”

“Then how can you bow down to them?” Hayato says. “How can you bear it? Making us all look like cowards?”

“You don’t look like a coward,” Ryu says. “I look like a coward.”

“Same difference,” Hayato says. “It’s the same goddamn thing. You’re me, you know that. Everyone knows that. You’re me, and I’m you, and…”

“I’m sorry,” Ryu says. “I _am_ a coward.” Ryu can feel the bile in his throat, can feel the sinking in his stomach as Hayato stares at him like he’s never really known him. Maybe he hasn’t, Ryu thinks, because Ryu is the biggest coward in the whole wide world. “We already hashed this out in the classroom.”

Ryu’s not a coward because he doesn’t want to fight—he doesn’t care one way or the other about this fight, even if only he and Take will ever know why he’s done this. Ryu’s not a coward about fist-fights. Ryu isn’t a coward about much of anything, anymore, because Hayato has broken him down and remade him reckless. 

Ryu is a coward because Hayato is looking at him, looking into him, and Ryu is closing himself off, because he’s scared that Hayato might see the things he’s kept buried in his heart. Hayato might see the things he’s tried so hard to wish away, because Hayato is his best friend, or _was_ his best friend.

Ryu is more afraid of losing Hayato over those feelings than he is of losing Hayato over this, and that makes him a coward.

“I won’t forgive you for this,” Hayato says, and he’s staring out at the street. He doesn’t look at Ryu as he speaks, just tightens his lips into a thin line. “This was a matter of honor. I thought we were a team.”

“I know,” Ryu says, and he closes his eyes and thinks about Take’s face, eyes wet as he peers up through blond bangs. “I knew that before I did it.”

“Then how could you—” Hayato starts, and Take’s words ring in Ryu’s ears. _She was proud of me, Ryu_ , and Ryu swallows, and his throat feels too small, and he can barely breathe, and his body is flashing hot and cold and he’s nothing but dust. “Never mind. I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Hayato,” Ryu says. “I have my reasons.”

“What are they, then?!” Hayato snaps. “Explain it to me, Ryu.” A thread of pleading weaves in with the anger and confusion. Ryu’s never heard that in Hayato’s voice before. It aches and burns and makes Ryu feel like there’s a piece of him that’s withering. 

“I can’t,” Ryu says, and he wonders if the hopelessness in his voice is as clear to Hayato as it is to him. 

“Fine,” Hayato says, and he turns away. “It’s your choice.”

“No,” Ryu whispers. “I’d never choose this,” but Hayato is already gone.

**

In some versions of Sleeping Beauty, when the princess falls asleep, all fall into slumber with her: the king, the queen, the servants, the dogs. The villagers, the nobles, the visitors and natives alike. The entire kingdom goes to sleep.

Ryu finds this much less cruel, but also much less believable.

**

“I might like to work at a cake shop,” Kamiyama says to Ryu, during their employment meeting. “I like cake.”

“Making cake is not the same as eating cake,” Ryu says, even as he scawls it down in his notebook. 

“When I was a kid,” Kamiyama says, “I used to help my mother make cakes. It was fun. It has… Those are good memories. Not like the others.” He flushes, like he’s said too much.

Ryu can empathize. He doesn’t press. “All you need to do is graduate, Kamiyama. It’ll make you look more responsible to employers.”

“I’m trying,” Kamiyama says. “I’ve got… other things to worry about.”

“I know,” Ryu says, and Kamiyama leans back in his chair and puts his arms behind his head. 

“Are we done?” he asks, and Ryu fights a small grin. “I’ve got things to do.”

“Yes,” Ryu says. “A cake shop… wouldn’t be a bad choice.”

“I want only the good memories,” Kamiyama admits. “I’m more likely to find them there.”

“If only we could choose which memories we held the closest,” Ryu murmurs, and Kamiyama nods, before disappearing out the door, making way for Ryu’s next appointment.

**

Sometimes, when Ryu closes his eyes, it’s Hayato’s smiling face he sees behind his lids. It’s Hayato, leaning in too close, touching too much, making Ryu uncomfortable and pleased in the same breath.

Those dreams are the hardest ones to wake up from, because the real Hayato doesn’t smile now. Ryu would rather cling to memories of a time he’ll never forget.

**

Ryu is sitting on his couch when the doorbell rings. He feels like a crotchety old man when he looks through the peep hole to see who it is, relaxing when it’s just Take. He opens the door to Take’s beaming smile and a bag of what appears to be convenience store dinners. “Thank goodness you were quick! It’s raining cats and dogs outside!”

“What are you doing here?” Ryu asks dryly, and Take crosses his arms over his chest, bag swinging to hit Ryu harmlessly in the stomach. It’s wet, like Take, from the downpour.

“Taking initiative,” Take says, and Ryu frowns.

“You could have called,” Ryu says, and Take smiles in a way that makes his eyes disappear into crescent moons. 

“Not giving you time to make up excuses or reasons you’re too busy,” Take explains. “Guerilla friendship tactics.”

Ryu is startled into a laugh, and Take looks around. “I don’t think I’ve ever been inside of here.”

“It’s not much,” Ryu says, not making any effort to stop Take’s exploration. Take drops the bag on Ryu’s tiny, cluttered coffee table and wanders around while Ryu goes into the kitchen to put on the kettle for tea. He licks his lips and contemplates the red tea he favors for days like today, when the rain is heavy and he’s feeling melancholy.

“You still have your school uniform?” Take asks, and Ryu pauses, setting two mugs on the counter and wandering back into the main area of the flat. Take is standing there, staring at his uniform jacket.

“I couldn’t throw it away,” Ryu says. Take looks a bit nostalgic as he runs his finger up the material of the sleeves, and then he’s pulling the hanger out of the closet.

“Your jacket,” Take says slowly, as he stares. “Where’s the second button?”

Ryu looks at the jacket, eyes immediately going to where Take’s hand lingers. _I’ll hold on to this,_ Hayato had said.

Take’s head tilts to the side, his brow creasing in thought. “Did you give it away?”

“Yes,” Ryu says, and Take’s eyes go round. “Did you have a girlfriend in high school, Ryu? Did I miss this—“ Then he stops, and his mouth curls downward. “Or…”

He lays the jacket on the bed, and walks toward where Ryu has leaned back against the wall, hands pressed flat against it. Ryu watches Take curiously. 

Take steps into his personal space. 

“What are you doing?” Ryu asks, and Take reaches for his neck. Ryu doesn’t flinch, because he _trusts_ Take, but his eyes are wary. 

“This is Hayato’s necklace, right?” Takes asks, as his fingers wrap gently around the chain, pulling it from under Ryu’s sweatshirt carefully and dropping it back against his chest.

“Yes,” Ryu says, and under the dim light of his apartment, there’s not a lot of shine on the pendant. Still, it’s bright enough that there’s no mistaking the pattern. 

“I knew this looked familiar,” Take says. “Funny thing is, I touched buttons just like this one every morning for three years and I still didn’t recognize it.” Take steps back.

“Take,” Ryu whispers and Take is staring at him. Ryu feels bare.

“You and Hayato…” Take starts, and then there’s a pause, and Take’s eyes look so sympathetic, and it hurts. It burns, like Ryu is on fire. Ryu doesn’t know how to make it stop.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Ryu says. “Don’t look at me like everything is different now.”

“I didn’t know,” Take says. “None of us knew that…”

“You knew enough,” Ryu says, and he hasn’t felt this adrift in awhile. This cast out to sea. “Hayato is everything.”

“Oh,” Take says, and Ryu retreats behind the counter, pouring the hot water into mugs. He picks them up. “Aren’t those too hot to hold like that?”

“It’s better than feeling nothing,” Ryu says, as he hands Take his mug of tea. “Anything is better than feeling nothing.”

They both know he means ‘everything’. Anything is better than feeling ‘everything’.

**

The first time they kiss, Ryu isn’t expecting it at all.

He’s waiting outside the classroom, leaning against the wall, waiting for Hayato to get his stuff so they can walk home together. The hallway is empty, and no one but Ryu’s stuck around today to wait for Hayato.

Hayato looks surprised to see him, and Ryu snorts. “What’s with that face?”

“You waited?” Hayato asks, and the words sound a little softer than Ryu is used to. Things are still a little strange between them, even though Ryu has apologized for lying and Hayato’s apologized for everything that came after that. 

It’s almost like they’re walking on eggshells, and Hayato sometimes looks at Ryu like he’s afraid Ryu will disappear. Ryu’s not going anywhere, but he understands how Hayato feels. Lately it’s been harder to keep from reaching out and touching—just a slip of fabric from Hayato’s uniform jacket or a soft bit of skin at his wrist to remind Ryu that Hayato is here, by his side, all over again. That this isn’t a brief reprieve from the crushing solitary days that proceeded now, Ryu turning to his left and seeing no one where Hayato should be. 

So Ryu understands the way Hayato sometimes unsurely looks at him through thick eyelashes, like he’s a ghost and Hayato’s gaze straight-on will evaporate him like mist, because it’s the same way Ryu feels when Hayato leans into his space; warmth spreading all the way through him and his stomach sinking at the thought that this could go away again, someday.

Ryu clenches his hands into fists, and vows it won’t. “Of course I waited,” Ryu replies, and Hayato smiles, tiny but sure. His eyes are strange, carrying something in them that Ryu’s never seen before but makes his pulse run quick, and his skin tingle with some kind of anticipation. A part of Ryu thinks it’s familiar, like maybe he’s seen it in the mirror, when he thinks about Hayato.

“Ne, Ryu?” Hayato says, and then he suddenly turns, pressing one hand to the wall and trapping Ryu against the closed classroom door with his body, “do you ever…”

“Ever what?” Ryu asks, and his breath is coming shallow because Hayato is so close, closer than Ryu is used to and maybe closer than he can handle. Ryu feels trapped and nervous and hot, so hot, and Hayato’s breath is warm on his face. It smells like red-bean and powdered sugar, and it tickles Ryu’s nose, and blows at his bangs. 

“I just…” Hayato says, and then he groans, frustrated, and catches Ryu’s eyes with his own, pinning Ryu in place. “Don’t you know?” Hayato’s cheeks are flushed red, and Ryu is sure his own are too, and his hands, still clenched, shake. He feels weak, like his knees are going to give out, and Hayato is moving closer, and maybe Ryu _does_ know, after all.

“Yes,” Ryu says, and then Hayato is kissing him, their chests pressed flush against each other, and Hayato’s hand, the one not against the wall, slides up Ryu’s arm to his shoulder and across his neck, stopping to rest along the line of his clavicle, fingers splayed wide like he’s holding Ryu back, or holding Ryu up.

Hayato’s lips are soft and sticky against his own, and oh so warm, and Ryu is terrified out of his mind, but at the same time, he feels like a dam has burst inside of him. He reaches on fist up and grabs a handful of Hayato’s shirt, a tiny plastic button digging painfully into his palm because he’s holding on too hard. Hayato’s mouth presses in hard, and Ryu is helpless to the assault, letting his mouth part slightly as Hayato sighs. The rush of air fills Ryu’s lungs, and Ryu is melting, or exploding, or something like that, and he doesn’t have any idea what to do, but somehow, _somehow_ , he starts kissing back. 

Hayato releases a tiny groan of surprise when Ryu leans forward and tilts his head to the side to seal their mouths more firmly, and the tiny noise spreads through him like wildfire, setting him ablaze with all sorts of things he’s only felt hints of over the past few months, or years, or forever. Hayato’s melting too, Ryu thinks, and then Hayato’s mouth is parting, and his tongue is swiping experimentally at Ryu’s lips, and that’s _new_ , Ryu thinks, but he doesn’t hate it, and when he attempts to return the favor, Hayato takes advantage, slipping his tongue into Ryu’s mouth and stealing any remaining coherency Ryu may have been trying to muster. 

As their tongues slide together, Ryu leans heavier against the door, and Hayato takes another step forward, until Ryu’s hand is trapped between them, and Hayato’s left thigh has slipped between his own. Hayato’s hand moves its way up his neck, leaving a trail of electricity in it’s wake, and weaves into Ryu’s hair, pulling too hard and making Ryu groan because he _likes_ it. 

Then Hayato becomes impatient, lips devouring him, teeth biting at Ryu’s lips until Ryu can taste blood, and Ryu likes that too. He’s hard against Hayato’s thigh, and it’s too much, and maybe Hayato can read his mind, because he tears himself away, dropping his face to Ryu’s right, brow and nose burrowing into the space in the hollow of Ryu’s shoulder. 

Ryu’s breath comes hard and fast, and one hand still clutches at Hayato’s shirt, and he’s pretty sure he’s torn off one of the buttons. He aches with arousal, and his head feels fuzzy, with confusion and fear and something else, too, that he doesn’t recognize. Whatever it is, it makes him reach his other hand up and tug impatiently at Hayato’s hair, and Hayato yelps, and bites his neck in revenge, and it goes straight to Ryu’s cock, making him throb, and that’s new too. 

“What the fuck?” Ryu says, when he finds words. “What the actual fuck.”

“I don’t know,” Hayato says. “I just want to be closer.” Hayato, Ryu notices, is shaking, now, or maybe it’s Ryu who is shaking, but either way, silence passes between them, and it’s enough to make his heart tremble in his chest. 

“Closer,” Ryu says, and Hayato moves, his tongue flicking out to find the vein in Ryu’s neck. His tongue presses flat against it, and then he bites, and Ryu hisses, but not because it hurts. 

“Yes,” Hayato says. “I want to be so close you can’t disappear.” Hayato pulls back now, and Ryu lets his arms fall to his sides. It’s suddenly too cold with Hayato standing so far away, and Ryu resists the urge to drag Hayato closer and take his mouth the same way Hayato had taken his. Ryu’s lip stings, and the metallic taste of blood lingers, and his shoulders are tight from the tension of _everything_.

Ryu closes his eyes, but he can still see Hayato’s face in front of him, lips slick and swollen, cheeks red and hair mussed, eyes heavy lidded from a combination of arousal and apprehension. He can still see Hayato’s face in front of him, and that tells him things, maybe. “I want that, too,” Ryu murmurs back, and for a moment, he wonders if Hayato has even heard him, but when he opens his eyes, Hayato is staring at him, and there’s that small smile again, tentative and strangely warm. 

Ryu swallows, and his mouth is dry. He can taste Hayato on his teeth and tongue and along his cheeks, and it’s… he doesn’t mind it. He doesn’t hate it. He might even like it. 

And when he stops, for the briefest moment, to consider things, that feeling that’s been slithering around in his gut like he’d swallowed snakes is still there, but it’s no longer making him nauseous. _Oh,_ Ryu thinks. _So this is what that was_. 

Hayato pushes his hands into his pockets, and turns away, looking out toward the door, where the open expanse of schoolyard awaits them. His eyelashes are so long. “Okay?” Hayato asks, and there are so many other questions buried in the single word that Ryu feels all of his anxiety seep out of him with his next exhale. 

“Yes,” Ryu says, and he pushes off the wall, ignoring his fading erection and the way his shoulders feel a little scraped and the way he’s certain his hair must look, so he can stand next to Hayato. Hayato’s taller height is comforting. Ryu lets his arm press, lightly, against Hayato’s, just enough to make a point. “Of course we are.”

Hayato’s eyes are bright; Ryu can see that even though Hayato is only glancing out of the corner of his eye. 

“Of course,” Hayato mimics, in a voice that sounds nothing like Ryu and seems a bit relieved. “How can you be so sure?” The question isn’t sarcastic.

Ryu shrugs. “I’m always sure about you,” he admits, and it’s embarrassing, more embarrassing than the bruise he can feel forming on his neck where Hayato has left a mark, and more embarrassing than the way he fell apart to Hayato’s tongue in his mouth. “We should get home.” 

Hayato bumps him, and Ryu knows it’s on purpose. “I’m glad we’re friends again,” Hayato says, and Ryu’s chest constricts, because despite the words, they both know that what’s between them is more than that. It’s been more than that for a long time. 

“Me too,” Ryu says, and his heart uncurls.

**

  
_The less there is of eloquence, the more there is of love._

\-- Charles Perrault, _The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods_

**

“Do you think you’ll stay on at Kurogin next year?” Shiratori asks, as they eat their lunch. Ryu nods.

“Yes,” he says, and Shiratori drowns. 

“I think I’m leaving,” she says. “Usually they don’t let teachers stay at one school for longer than six years. I’ll probably get rotated.”

“You seem sad,” Ryu remarks, actually turning to pay attention to Shiratori.

“I like it here,” she says. “I’ve gotten used to the way things work, and the people. It’s not too far from my home.”

“I see,” Ryu says. “So it’s familiar…”

“It’s not just that,” Shiratori says. “It’s… I’m comfortable. It’s easy, isn’t it, to stay where one is comfortable? This is where I’ve been since I became a teacher.”

“Your first school, eh?”

“So I suppose it’s time for me to move on,” she says wistfully, and Ryu watches her poke sadly at her packed lunch. “We all have to move on sometime, right?”

“Why?” Ryu asks, and and he clenches his fists. “What’s wrong with staying where you’re happy?”

Uchiyama, who has been staying out of the conversation, suddenly leans on his elbows and turns toward Ryu. “Because that’s not how life works,” Uchiyama says. “We can’t just stop time from moving forward because we like how it is now.”

Ryu just wants to stop with Hayato. He wants to be exactly where Hayato left him if… _when_ Hayato wakes up.

**

Hayato is not a princess. He’s a grown-up who still acts like a schoolboy, who spits and swears and picks fights with anyone who looks at him funny. He brushes his hair with a hundred strokes because he’s vain, not because he’s singing to birds he treats as people, and he likes his sheets made out of rough cotton because cotton is easier to tear if he needs to make bandages. He’s got no evil stepsiblings or jealous queens chasing him; just thugs who want revenge for a beat-down Hayato delivered four years ago, or gangsters who want Hayato to join their team.

Hayato is not a princess, and life is not a fairytale, and Ryu’s Sleeping Beauty might never wake up, even if he waits and waits and waits as the world passes them both by.

**

Winter is dying out. Ryu’s mother has her gaze trained out the window, eyes surveying her thawing garden. She looks pensive, but so is Ryu.

“You’re staying at Kurogin next year, then,” she says, and Ryu hums his confirmation, and she sighs. “Have you no ambition?”

“Not a bit,” Ryu says. “Besides, I’m useful where I am.”

“Your father…”

“Has nothing to do with the decisions of a grown man?” Ryu finishes, and his mother exhales, and Ryu knows he’s won. 

Not that his mother puts up much of a battle these days. Perhaps she’s grown used to Ryu’s rebellion, after six years. Perhaps she just never had much fight to begin with. 

Ryu might’ve been like that. If things hadn’t worked out the way they did. If there’d been no Hayato.

He wonders how his mother might have been, if she’d had Ryu’s luck.

“Do you ever… have regrets?” Ryu asks her, and she sets her tea down on the table slowly and calmly. She’s studying the lacquer of her nail polish, with its perfectly done French tips, and she sighs.

“Sometimes,” she says, slowly. “But what’s done is done.” She looks up at Ryu then, and maybe, Ryu thinks, how he turned out is one of them.

“I don’t,” Ryu says, and her eyes widen. “Have any regrets, I mean.” He closes his eyes to her expression, and instead imagines the way Hayato’s hands had felt between his own, back when they were thirteen and Ryu was lost. He remembers the way Hayato had said the word family, and the way the word had buried itself inside him and grown into a tree so strong, anchored in his heart. “I can’t say I would change anything at all.”

“Are you happy like this, Ryu?” she asks, and she’s never asked anything like that before. Her voice sounds like she might care, a little, about his answer.

“No,” Ryu says. “But I was. I was happy enough to make up for now.”

“Then maybe we have things in common after all, Ryu,” she says, and they drink the rest of their tea in silence.

Later, he’s relating the conversation to a persistent Take, who badgers him into dinner at a curry restaurant, and Take leans forward. 

“I think she must be wondering if you’re ever going to move on,” Take asks. “Let the past go.”

“I can’t,” Ryu says. “And I don’t want to.”

“You can’t live in your memories, Ryu. You’ve got other things to live for, right? Students and the wide-open future. Your life isn’t over.” Take scratches anxiously at the back of his neck. “Maybe you should get a girlfriend, or take up a new hobby, or…”

“You don’t understand,” Ryu says, and his throat is so dry it hurts to speak. “Moving on is…” He thinks about Hayato’s laugh, the way it echoes between his ribs, the sound filling him up until he might burst. He thinks about the way Hayato’s hands are so rough, the skin calloused and scarred and perfect along Ryu’s skin. He thinks about how Hayato’s eyes light up over the silliest things, and the way they fill with shadows at the oddest moments. He thinks of sitting by the riverside, the sound of cars overhead and water rushing below, fading rays of the sun filling the space they don’t need to fill with conversation.

He thinks of a snowy day, where they share Hayato’s coat, and Hayato tells him it’s okay to feel.

Ryu, if he knows anything, knows that nothing can ever compare to that.

“Ryu,” Take says, and for a moment, Ryu thinks he’s going to place a gloved hand on Ryu’s shoulder. He doesn’t though. Ryu wouldn’t have responded to it well, anyway.

“You don’t understand at all,” Ryu repeats. “I can’t.”

**

  
`the world doesn't stop just because one person is asleep`   


**

Ryu likes that Hayato’s mouth doesn’t let up. He likes that Hayato’s kisses are unpracticed and rough and demanding. He likes it because it means that Hayato doesn’t think Ryu will break.

It means that Hayato trusts Ryu not to break.

And Ryu won’t disappoint him, because Ryu can give as good as he gets, and he kisses Hayato back with everything he has, which, Ryu realizes, as his hands sink into Hayato’s hair, stiff with spray, is quite a lot. 

Hayato tastes like blood and sweat and fear, and also like soy sauce and ramen broth, and it’s intoxication. Ryu feels hot, like he’s melting, at the slide of Hayato’s lips along his own, and it stings, because his mouth is bruised from the punch he’d taken earlier, but _god_ , he can’t care about it at all because Hayato is _kissing_ him, and it’s like coming home.

Hayato is more like home than anything Ryu’s ever felt before. Like he’s been sailing for so long and he’s finally dropped anchor here in Hayato’s punishing grip and desperate, sloppy kisses that feel so good they hurt.

**

February vacation sneaks up on Ryu.

The days pass in the same fog that Ryu’s become accustomed to, like he’s reaching and reaching for something that makes him full, but at the end of the day, he’s still empty and waiting. 

Glass coffins aren’t just for Briar Rose, in the end. He watches the world outside moving so fast, and he’s frozen.

“What are you going to do with your vacation?” Uchiyama asks. “Shrine visits? Tour Kamakura? What?”

“Sleep,” Ryu says, and he traces aimless patterns along his desk. 

“Have you heard about the crime wave?” Uchiyama says, changing the topic. “Lots of people getting mugged and beat up down by the docks. Pretty sketchy.”

“I’ll warn my students to stay away from there,” Ryu says. “Last thing they need is to get caught up in that. The police wouldn’t ask questions.”

“True,” Uchiyama says. “I don’t envy you your class. I don’t even have to tell my students to avoid places like that. They do it out of fear.”

“There are scarier things than violence,” Ryu says, and Uchiyama nods. “You and I know that.”

Uchiyama stretches, and sighs. “I hope you don’t sleep your whole vacation away,” Uchiyama says. “Go and see your friends or something. The ones who get you drunk.”

“I’d rather be alone,” Ryu says honestly. _At least then I don’t have to pretend to be whole._

“All right,” Uchiyama says. “Suit yourself.” 

Loneliness has never been a distant stranger to Ryu. Loneliness, instead, was Ryu’s companion during his childhood, pressing in close and curling around him, and almost suffocating him with how tightly it held on, wrapping its arms around his torso and making it hard for him to breathe.

Hayato made loneliness abate with every consecutive exhale.

Now, the shadows in Ryu’s life creep ever closer, and Ryu just keeps his eyes on the light.

Ryu wonders if this is how he’ll spend the rest of his life.

Waiting.

**

  
Your heart’s a mess  
You won’t admit to it  
It makes no sense  
But I’m desperate to connect  
And you, you can’t live like this  
Gotye, _Hearts a Mess_  


**

“Nothing’s perfect,” Hayato says, grass and hair mingling as he lies there, eyes on the sky. “But for me, nothing has ever been this close.”

 _I love you_ , Ryu’s heart says, but Ryu just rolls his eyes and looks down at the water. “Sap.”

“Whatever,” Hayato says. “You think so too.”

“Of course I do,” Ryu says, and he grabs Hayato’s wrist, touch rough. “And as the leader of Kurogin, I-“

“I’m the leader,” Hayato says, and they’re wrestling, arms and legs tangled with dirt and grass, hair sweaty and mussed. 

“Okay,” Ryu says, and Hayato laughs, and Ryu wishes that time would stop.

It doesn’t.

**

Ryu spends February holidays with Hayato.

Hayato doesn’t move. Ryu pretends, for a while, that the world doesn’t move either.

**

  
_“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.”_

\--Edna St Vincent Millay

**

Kamiyama’s arm is in a splint when February holidays end. Ryu holds him after class.

“What happened?” Ryu asks, voice tight. “You know I’m going to have to suspend you if you’ve been fighting, and you _know_ I don’t want to do that.” Ryu swallows as he takes in the rest of it. A black eye and a swollen lower lip. Ryu’s sure there are other wounds hidden under the student’s black jacket. 

He’s wearing his shirt buttoned all the way up. Ryu knows the tactics. He’s used them all.

“It’s just a sprain,” Kamiyama says. “Just had a little accident down at the docks, is all.”

“The docks?” Ryu asks, crossing his arms and staring at Kamiyama. “Why were you down there?”

“I was…” Kamiyama pauses and looks embarrassed. “I was thinking, you know, over the holiday. About your friend.”

_Beep, beep, beep._

“Oh?” Ryu says. “So why were you down at the docks?” Ryu knows his voice is too rough, but Kamiyama seems to respond to that better than his teacher voice. Ryu wonders if it’s because Kamiyama can see, when Ryu is like this, a little more on edge, that Ryu’s not so different from him after all. 

“A couple of months ago,” Kamiyama starts, and then he winces, shifting his arm a bit. Ryu thinks it’s more than sprained. “I fell in with a gang down there. Not like our gang,” and he gestures to the empty classroom, where Kamiyama’s friends have probably retreated to the courtyard to terrorize the new gym teacher, “but a real one.”

“A real one?” Ryu asks, his voice cracking. A real gang that meets down by the docks… sounds terribly familiar. Icy hands draw patterns up Ryu’s back and wrap around his throat. 

“Yeah,” Kamiyama says, and he turns his head to look out the window. “At first, it seemed cool. They gave me money for odd jobs—nothing hard, or anything. Nothing scary,” he adds quickly, when Ryu’s eyes narrow into slits. “Just running errands and stuff.”

“But?” Ryu says, and it’s not really a question. His eyes check for injuries again, and he notices more—the way Kamiyama shifts back and forth like one of his legs hurts. The way he seems to wince with every exhale like his ribs are bruised. 

“But a couple of weeks ago, one of the higher-ups got out of jail,” Kamiyama continues, and he sounds lost, and scared, and Ryu’s heart sinks all the way into his stomach. 

“Oh no,” Ryu says. “Not them.” He says it low, like a whisper, and Kamiyama is too lost in his own thoughts to notice Ryu’s barely bitten down panic. 

“A couple of days ago, they wanted me to go rough some guy up. But not just me,” Kamiyama says. “Like, me and these five other guys. We find the guy, and he’s just some little guy. A loan-banker or something. He clearly can’t fight, or anything.” Kamiyama shudders. “That’s not cool, you know. I like fair fights. I like turf wars between even players.”

“And?” Ryu urges, even as he struggles not to clench his fist and demand Kamiyama speak faster or else.

“It’s like… that wasn’t a fight,” Kamiyama says. “It was an execution.”

The word execution flashes red behind Ryu’s eyes. Hayato, bleeding, so still, so very still. Hayato, still sleeping. Hayato, who might never wake up. 

“I told them I wouldn’t help. That this wasn’t cool,” Kamiyama says. “So they beat me up too. And told me to get my priorities straight or next time it be me for real.”

“I see,” Ryu says, and something in his face must betray his anger because Kamiyama’s eyes widen and he takes a step back.

“Odagiri- _sensei_?” Kamiyama asks, and Ryu turns away, packing up his basket with trembling hands. 

“It’s fine, Kamiyama,” Ryu says. “I’m going to take care of this.”

“What?” Kamiyama looks at him like he’s crazy. 

“Shinazaki and I have a score to settle,” Ryu says, and he realizes, belatedly, that Kamiyama hadn’t said a name. “Under no circumstances are you to go near the docks.”

“But _sensei_ ,” Kamiyama starts, but then Ryu, basket packed and resolve settling on his shoulders heavy as a mantle, catches his eyes.

“I’m your teacher,” Ryu says. “I’ll take care of it.”

Ryu goes to the teacher’s office and drops his basket on his desk. Shiratori squeaks and backs away, her greeting halting at her lips at the sight of Ryu’s face. 

Uchiyama gives a low whistle. “What crawled up your ass and died?” he asks, and Shiratori blushes and excuses herself as Uchiyama sits on the edge of Ryu’s desk. Cold fury is still coursing through him. 

“Kamiyama,” Ryu says through gritted teeth. “He’s being… coerced.”

“No one has to coerce that kid to join a gang,” Uchiyama says. “He probably wants to join one.”

“He tried to back out,” Ryu says. “They beat him like that.”

“Pretty bad,” Uchiyama notes. “Saw him this morning and he wasn’t even preening about his war wounds. That’s how I knew it was serious.”

“They did a lot worse to Hayato.”

Uchiyama’s face switches from casual to fierce. “Your friend.”

“Yes,” Ryu says, like the word friend is enough to describe everything that Hayato was, _is_ , to him. 

“Damn,” Uchiyama says. “What’re you going to do?”

Ryu looks down at his trembling hands and takes a deep breath. “I’d rather not say,” Ryu says, and then he cuts eyes over to Uchiyama. “But I was willing to learn to let go of what he did to Hayato and refocus my energy elsewhere, for both Hayato’s sake and everyone else’s. But I won’t let him start all over with someone else.”

Uchiyama nods. “I respect that.” He cracks his knuckles. “Street laws.” 

Ryu hasn’t been a delinquent for so long he’s almost forgotten the rules, but there are some things you never forget. _”A man always makes his own decisions,”_ Hayato used to say, and Ryu closes his eyes. 

“You can never completely let go of your past,” Ryu says wryly, even though humor is the furthest thing from his mind.

“Would you want to?” Uchiyama asks, and Ryu shakes his head in the negative.

“Of course not,” Ryu says. “It made me who I am.” He pulls his coat on hastily. “And who I am won’t stand for the terrorizing of high school kids by a man who’s known for backing up his threats with attempted murder.”

Later, Ryu leaves a message on Take’s phone. “I know I said I wouldn’t go after Shinazaki,” Ryu says, and he laughs a little into his phone. “But maybe Yankumi had a little more influence than we thought. Shinazaki is threatening my ‘precious student’ and I won’t lose someone else to him. Someone else I couldn’t help.”

**

When Hayato drops to his knees, in front of Ryu’s father, and begs him to let Ryu graduate with the rest of them, head toward the floor and both palms flat in traditional posture… that’s when Ryu knows, for sure, what family is.

It isn’t the man across from him, it’s the men behind and beside him. It’s Hayato, and Tsucchi and Take and Hyuuga… His friends. 

In school the next day, Ryu’s hands shake as they touch the wood of the desk, and he can’t believe he’s here. He can’t believe the cheers and banners and Formation H. He can’t believe he’s wanted, this much. By anyone.

And then Hayato leans over and catches Ryu’s sleeve, thumb brushing Ryu’s wrist, and Ryu is reminded there’s one person who wants him just the way he is. 

They get milkshakes after school, and Hayato and Tsucchi argue over the phone numbers they didn’t get from the girls at the karaoke place, and Ryu and Take watch in silence as Hyuuga flits back and forth between them. None of them even make motions toward leaving until it’s way past dark, and the guy behind the counter starts casting them dirty looks that have Ryu and Take leading their friends, still playfully bickering, out the door. Tsucchi excuses himself, and Hyuuga lives in the opposite direction, and Take makes it until his own turn off before he goes on his own way, with a jaunty wave behind him as he heads home to a mother who’s unexpectedly proud. 

Ryu’s turn off comes too, but he doesn’t take it, instead continuing to walk with Hayato. Hayato doesn’t say anything, just moves a little closer so their hands brush when they walk, and Ryu waits until the streets are clear before he pulls Hayato into a side alley, crushing him to the outside wall of a closed shop.

“Ryu, what…” Hayato says, but Ryu cuts him off, mouth already parted as he slams against Hayato’s full lips. Hayato quickly responds, tongue coming out to curl around Ryu’s, biting on Ryu’s lips and taking as much as Ryu is, hungry and fierce.

“You bowed to my father,” Ryu says. “You don’t bow to anyone, but you bowed to my father.”

“You belong with us,” Hayato says, starts to say, tries to say, but Ryu eats his words, and plunges forward again, trying to taste more, because Hayato is flavored like chocolate milkshakes and forbidden fruit and all the flavors that Ryu loves by themselves but all together are so intoxicating he’ll never be able to get enough. “Fuck,” Hayato finally gasps out, dragging his mouth along the skin of Ryu’s cheek, and catching his ear, tongue finding the shell of it and outlining it in a way that makes Ryu’s knees feel weak.

“I belong with you,” Ryu says, and Ryu’s hands find Hayato’s shoulders, and Hayato leans forward and finds Ryu’s pulse, following the vein of his jugular with tiny nips and nibbles sure to leave behind marks that Ryu will cherish in the morning even as he figures out how to cover them up.

“Yeah,” Hayato says. “And don’t you forget it.”

“I thought you wanted a girlfriend,” Ryu gasps, as Hayato’s hands slide up under his shirt, splaying across bare skin and making goosebumps rise along his spine. He gasps as Hayato pushes back against him, thigh slipping between Ryu’s as Ryu braces his arms against Hayato’s shoulders. 

“I want…” Hayato says, and it’s enough. Ryu knows what Hayato wants, because Hayato is Ryu is Hayato, sometimes, and Ryu’s hands slip down to Hayato’s torso, and Ryu’s chin tilts up so Hayato can lean down and devour him, and Ryu thinks that no matter what happens tomorrow, or the next day, Ryu will always have had this.

Ryu will always remember this, Hayato’s thigh pressed against his erection and Hayato’s heart pressed against his own, both of them beating so fast in the still of the night.

It’s unbearably warm, and Ryu has never liked the cold, so that’s fine. Perfect. Better. 

Everything. 

“No matter where your dad sends you,” Hayato says, “I’ll be waiting for you to come back.” Hayato’s mouth doesn’t pause as he speaks. He’s too busy leaving kisses and bites along every bit of skin Ryu’s clothing doesn’t cover. “So don’t you dare forget about me.”

“How could I forget about you?” Ryu asks, as his fingers skate along Hayato’s ribs, wringing gasps from Hayato, who pulls him closer, palms exploring the grooves in Ryu’s spine. “How could I ever, possibly, forget about you?”

“Good,” Hayato says, and Ryu licks his way into Hayato’s mouth to shut him up.


	5. Chapter 5

**

Memory paints Ryu’s waking moments, splashing reds and yellows and blues across his daily existence until he can barely see anything through the bright patches of color.

There are moments they should have had, streaking in teal, and moments that he’ll never forget, in oranges and violets and golds. There are moments as fleeting at the full moon in the summer in vibrant silvers and blues.

If he could, Ryu would fill the rest of the space, until no bits of the canvas were blank, and Ryu was left awash in a sea of pigment far better than the white and gray of his everyday life.

**

Ryu dreams of the way the hospital sheets feel against the skin of his cheek, and the way Hayato, even when he’s so still that Ryu can barely feel his breathing, is so very warm.

**

When the doctor says that Hayato might not wake, Ryu’s world shifts.

Coma. _Koma_. From the Greek, Ryu learns. ‘A state of sleep.’ 

Hayato, Ryu wants to shout, wants to scream to the sky, to everyone and anyone who can or will listen, is not _asleep._

When someone is asleep, Ryu thinks, you can wake them up. When Hayato sleeps, he tosses and turns and kicks Ryu in the shins and sometimes he chews on a piece of Ryu’s hair like he’s a horse and Ryu’s hair is particularly delicious hay. When Hayato sleeps, he mumbles things about milkshakes and growls and scratches and cuddles, just as actively as he does these things when he’s awake. When Hayato sleeps, Ryu can tiptoe to the bathroom and fill a cup with water, and splash it on Hayato’s face until he wakes up sputtering and swearing and so very, very alive. 

Hayato, now, is not asleep. Hayato is somewhere so far away that Ryu can’t reach him, and Ryu has never felt so alone.

“He can’t respond to stimuli,” the doctor tells Hayato’s dad, as Taku stares at his brother’s form from the other side of the glass with an ashen face and shaking fingers hooked through his belt loops. Ryu’s hands are shaking too, so he hides them in his pockets and tries not to give anything away. “He can’t feel any pain right now, if that helps.”

It doesn’t help, Ryu wants to say, because Hayato is not asleep. Hayato is _not asleep._ Hayato is no stranger to pain, Ryu wants to tell the doctor. Hayato knows what pain feels like, and he’d never run away from it if he had the choice. 

Hayato’d never leave Ryu alone. 

“His skull is fractured,” the doctor says. “From a pipe, maybe. A baseball bat.” Yankumi had said baseball bats were only for playing baseball. Yankumi had said so, that time that Hayato had gone to take on Ara by himself. “His brain swelled, and there wasn’t enough oxygen… He might not make it through the night.”

It sounds like the buzzing of bees. It doesn’t make sense, or Ryu can’t make sense of it, only he knows Hayato is not asleep. He knows that Hayato is still. He knows that Hayato is too far away to reach.

_It’s okay to feel_ , Hayato had told him, and Ryu feels too much. Taku’s arms wrap about his midsection, and it’s just like another time, when Hayato and Taku and Ryu had sat on the floor in the middle of the Yabuki apartment and mourned another loss. Ryu forgets to be stiff. Ryu forgets to be anything but terrified. It swamps him. Ryu feels too much. 

“He’ll make it,” Ryu says fervently. “He’ll make it because Hayato never loses.”

Hayato makes it. 

_It’s okay to feel._ And Ryu feels far too much.

Ryu keeps feeling too much, just keeps on until one day he wakes up with his back, sweaty and tight, pressed up against a wooden bench, Taku on his left and Tsucchi on his right, watching a testimony he doesn’t want to hear. 

He shivers as Shinazaki takes the stand, because Shinazaki has cold eyes and perfect posture. He doesn’t look like a man on trial. He looks like he’s waiting for someone to take his order at a restaurant, or like he’s loitering outside a museum people watching, or like he’s doing any number of mundane, everyday things.

He doesn’t look like someone who hurt Hayato so bad Ryu couldn’t recognize his face through swollen bruises and the thin film of blood. He doesn’t look like a man who is afraid of punishment.

Worst of all, Ryu thinks, he doesn’t look like a man who feels remorse.

“Yabuki’d been with us too long,” Shinazaki says. ‘He knew too much, even if he stayed mostly on the right side of the law.” Shinazaki’s mouth curls. “Gangs aren’t like regular jobs. You can’t just leave because you’ve got a girlfriend.”

Ryu’s heart stutters, stops. Ryu’s blood runs cold. Ryu can’t breathe. Ryu wants, mostly, to wrap his hands around Shinazaki’s throat and squeeze until Shinazaki can’t breathe either. 

An eye for an eye. 

Ryu never really believed in it before, but Hayato had always believed in it. Hayato had cracked his knuckles and narrowed his eyes and taken back everything anyone ever tried to take from him. 

Ryu wants to take back Hayato from Shinazaki, but life doesn’t work like that. Shinazaki might go to jail but Hayato will still be not-asleep, skin deathly white and eyes closed, lashes stark against skin with bruises long since faded, and Ryu… Ryu will still be this aching, feeling thing with nowhere to turn and all these emotions he can’t put away and can’t hide. 

Ryu will start his first day as a teacher with wounds that won’t scab, and the memory of opening the results of his exam all by himself while Hayato lies with needles in his arm and a heartbeat so steady it’s like a stranger’s. 

When Ryu was small, left to his own devices in his room as his mother worked in the garden and his father was off being important to everyone but Ryu, Ryu used to devour fairytales. He’d read them carefully, pouring over every detail and letting the story swallow him whole, and at the end of it all, Ryu would be left emptier than before, longing for something he’d never had.

Hayato… is Ryu’s fairytale, in so many ways. Hayato is Ryu’s Huntsman, his Prince Charming, his Tinkerbell, his Cinderella. Hayato is Ryu’s Arabian peasant and his magic carpet. Hayato is everything Ryu had ever dreamed about as a child, lonely and separate from the world, watching from afar and never taking part.

And now Hayato is Ryu’s Briar Rose, his Princess Aurora, and he’ll sleep for a hundred years and all Ryu can do is wait. 

Except Hayato isn’t asleep. When people are asleep, you can wake them up.

Ryu doesn’t cry, because he doesn’t know how, but his eyes burn and burn and burn, and Hayato doesn’t move, and Ryu watches, and Ryu waits, and the days pass, and Ryu is so very cold.

**

  
The leaves of memory seemed to make  
A mournful rustling in the dark.  
\-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

**

Ryu doesn’t know why he expected Hayato to have moved.

“I’m going to do something really stupid today,” he tells Hayato, one hand brushing scraggly, overgrown bangs out of the man’s face. “Like, it’s so dumb that you would do it.”

He quiets, like he’s waiting for Hayato to respond, and then he laughs at himself, a little, a tiny, choking laugh that hurts more than it heals.

“One of the guys that got you; he’s going after my student.” Ryu curls a piece of Hayato’s hair around his finger. “Wish we could go after him together. We always made a good team.”

Ryu reaches for Hayato’s hand, and when he grips it, there’s… a tiny squeeze. Ryu blinks, twice. “I’m really losing it,” Ryu says to himself, nothing but a mumble. He squeezes Hayato’s hand back, and…

There it is again, a little return pressure. Like _magic_.

Ryu stands up and shouts, and then he thinks better of it, pressing the first floor call button to ring the front desk. 

Later, the doctor pulls him aside, as Taku, who stopped by right when the commotion started, pokes at Hayato’s face with amazement. Ryu can see a fierce hope in Taku’s eyes. “This happens, sometimes,” the doctor says. “It doesn’t mean he’ll wake up.” This is not the same doctor. 

The doctor who’d seen Hayato at his worst, swollen and broken and bleeding. This isn’t the doctor who’d seen Ryu the same. This isn’t the doctor who saw Hayato, against all odds, make it through the night.

“But he’s moving,” Ryu say stubbornly, jutting his jaw forward in a manner he probably stole from Hayato. “Hayato’s moving and you thought he wouldn’t.”

“Yes,” the doctor hedges. “But it still doesn’t mean-“

“If there’s a chance,” Ryu says, and now, his voice doesn’t waver. “If there’s a chance, Hayato will fight for it. Hayato might never have been the smartest, or the wisest, or the strongest.” Ryu shoves his hands in his pockets, licking his lips and shaking his hair out of his face. “But he never, _ever_ gives up. Even if it’s a stupid, pointless fight,” Ryu says, and there’s that feeling, again, like there’s something burning in his eyes. “That dumb asshole never gives up. He’ll keep fighting, and fighting, until it’s all said and done.”

The doctor sighs. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up,” the doctor says softly. He has kind eyes, Ryu notes, and he looks like the sort of person you’d trust immediately. Ryu’s not predisposed to trusting people, in general, but if he was, the doctor would make it easier. 

“When I was a kid,” Ryu says, slowly. “Hayato gave me a lot.” Ryu looks down at his perfectly shined shoes, with hems that fall just so. He remembers the dirt on Hayato’s face, and the way his smile shone like the sun. “The least I can give him is a little hope.”

“Fair enough,” the doctor replies, and smiles. 

Ryu can feel his heart hammering in his chest though, even as he’s packing up to leave, leaning forward to crush Hayato’s hand in his own one more time hoping for that little squeeze back. _Ha-ya-to_ , his heart says, in rapid beats, over and over again, and Ryu swallows it down. 

“You’d better come back to me,” Ryu whispers. “You promised.”

**

“Hayato,” Ryu whispers, and Hayato doesn’t stir. The bed is too small for two people, but they’ve made it work, limbs threaded around each other and Hayato’s breath hot on Ryu’s neck.

It’s infinitely hotter than Canada, and it’s good like this, it’s _right_ like this, and Ryu wonders if he can remain here, in the moment, forever, the button of Hayato’s jeans digging uncomfortably into his hip and pieces of his over-processed hair sneaking between Ryu’s lips. 

Hayato’s palm rests flat on his belly, like he’s claiming Ryu. _That’s silly_ , Ryu will tell him in the morning. _I’m already yours_.

“Hayato,” Ryu says, a little louder, and now he shifts, sighing and wriggling a bit. 

“Hai, _sensei_?” he teases, words slurred because he’s not really awake, and Ryu wants to smile, because Hayato will probably call him that in jest all the time now, because he’s still a bit incredulous that Ryu’s chosen that job, of all jobs. “Sleepy.”

“You still got my button?” Ryu asks, and Hayato huffs, and drags a hand up to his neck. Ryu’s heart melts when it falls out on a thin chain. 

“Course I do,” Hayato says. “I’d be a sucky best friend if I lost it.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ryu says, and then thinks better of it, because he doesn’t want to think about those long weeks ever again. 

“That was the last time,” Hayato mumbles. “The last time I’ll let you down. Unless you don’t let me go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” Ryu says, and he can’t help but rest his hand on top of Hayato’s on his stomach. “Sleep then.”

“You sleep too,” Hayato says. “We sleep together. I won’t leave you alone again. Promise.”

“It’s a promise,” Ryu agrees, and it’s like there are butterflies in his chest, and all these cliché things that make him still feel like a teenager. He wonders if it will always be like this. He hopes so. “Move in with me.”

“Okay,” Hayato says. “Remind me in the morning.”

“I will,” Ryu says, and he’s finally, _finally_ come home.

**

It’s easy enough to find out where the gang spends most of their time. Ryu only has to ask around covertly about unsafe places to a few vendors down by the docks before he knows where he’ll find Shinazaki.

Twilight is quickly turning into night, and the air gets cooler, and Ryu shivers. He’s not sure if it’s the eerie quiet as he finds his way into back alleys, or if it’s the building apprehension Ryu has always felt walking into battle with out Hayato by his side.

“Yo, Ryu!” a voice calls, and Ryu almost jumps out of his skin before the familiarity of the voice sinks in. 

“Tsucchi?” Ryu says, spinning around. “What the hell?”

“Losing your touch, Odagiri- _sensei_?” Take teases. “We’ve been behind you for the past ten minutes.”

“I must have known it was no threat,” Ryu throws right back, and Take feigns hurt.

“Ryu, I thought we were comrades in arms.”

“Yeah, Ryu, what’s with the cold reception?” Hyuuga tilts his head toward the garage door. “This the place?”

“Yes,” Ryu says. “They’re not too secretive, apparently. Everyone I asked confirmed this location.”

“Alright then,” Tsucchi says. “Then let’s go. Ahhh, this feeling of nostalgia…”

“You make it sound like we’re old,” Ryu says, with a tiny frown.

“You’ve been acting like you’re old for years,” Tsucchi replies. “Don’t get all sour about it now.”

“Yeah, Ryu, you’re the one that talks about things that happened four years ago as if they’re ancient history,” Hyuuga agrees, with a small smile. 

Ryu wants to smile, but then he realizes, all of a sudden, that his friends are here. “What are you doing?” Ryu asks solemnly. “You’ve got, you know, careers now. This isn’t high school anymore.”

“You didn’t think we’d let you do something this nuts by yourself, did you?” Tsucchi says, spitting into the grass. “Hayato’d have our heads.” He picks up a piece of iron, refuse from the construction, probably, and bangs it against the garage door obnoxiously like he’s trying to break it down. There’s the sound of shouting behind the door and Ryu can feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins even as he turns to regard his friends. “Plus, you know you can’t take out twelve guys by yourself. Not if Hayato got taken out by, what, seven of them?”

“They got him by surprise,” Ryu defends, and Tsucchi snorts. 

“No one gets Hayato by surprise.”

Ryu looks at them with wide eyes, and then his face relaxes into a resigned grin. “Take…”

“Well,” Take says. “It’s not like I won’t graduate if I get into a fight.” He scratches his head. “And plus,” he adds. “I sort of owe you one.”

Hyuuga snorts. “We’d better not lose and get caught, Ryu. I’m a salary man these days. So we need to be the ones leaving on our own two feet.”

Ryu cracks his knuckles. “I’ve got no intention of losing,” Ryu says. “I won’t let them take someone else from me.”

Tsucchi looks at Ryu, tilting his head to the side. “You look…” Tsucchi starts, and then he laces his fingers together and stretches his hands up above his head, stretching out his arms. 

“Look what?” Ryu queries.

“Like yourself,” Tsucchi says. “I dunno. Alive.”

“Feels like I’m doing something,” Ryu admits. “Something for Kamiyama. Something for Hayato. And…”

“And what?” Take asks, eyes narrowed as the garage door slowly opens. Ryu can taste the violence in the air, like acid on the back of his tongue as he anticipates battle.

“Something for myself, too,” Ryu says. 

“Ryu is always strongest when he’s protecting someone,” Take agrees. “You’re always shining brightest then.”

Ryu crosses his arms as eight or nine men emerge from the garage. For a second, Ryu feels a little like he’s becoming like Yankumi after all, fighting to protect what’s important to him. 

“Hope you haven’t gotten rusty,” Ryu says conversationally to Tsucchi as Tsucchi comes to stand by his left side. “I know it’s been a while.”

“I can still kick serious ass,” Tsucchi says, eyebrows drawn together in serious concentration. “Watch out for yourself, _sensei_.”

“You say _sensei_ like that means something bad,” Ryu jokes. “I’m sure you remember that our teacher was a badass Yakuza heir with fists of steel.”

“Oh, I remember,” Tsucchi says. “But you’re no Yankumi.”

“He’s a Ryu,” Take says. “That’s even better.”

There’s no Hayato, Ryu thinks, but Hayato lingers, like a ghost at Ryu’s side, and for now, just for now, it’s enough.

**

**Scenes included in the story of Sleeping Beauty:**

_“But don’t you remember? We’ve met before.”_

_Sleeping Beauty turns to the prince with wide, luminous eyes, a hand covering her mouth, open with surprise. “We have?”_

_“Of course,” said the prince. “You said so yourself… Once upon a dream.”_

 

**Scenes included in the abridged version of Ryu’s life:**

_“Am I dreaming?” Ryu asks, and Hayato chuckles, slipping into Ryu’s bed and wrapping one arm across his waist, face finding the hollow between Ryu’s neck and shoulder._

_“Are you?” Hayato asks. “What makes you think this is a dream?”_

_“Because real life isn’t a fairytale,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s touch becomes cool, and as Ryu opens his eyes, the image is fading away._

_And once again, Ryu is alone._

_He misses Hayato so much it’s hard to breathe._

**

Hayato never sleeps with his back to the door.

It’s the kind of fear you can’t outgrow, the kind that lingers far past the end of danger.

For Hayato, who thrives on violence and adrenaline and shallow bursts of anger, maybe the danger never passes.

“Stop rushing headfirst into scary things,” Ryu growls. “Just… stop.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Hayato breathes back, and he’s straddling Ryu, and trying to hold Ryu’s arms down. Ryu’s strong too, though, and Hayato’s hands on his wrists are too half-hearted, almost as weak as his glare.

“I was scared,” Ryu whispers, and Hayato’s surprised at his admission. Things between them have been strange, recently repaired with echoes of their separation, times Ryu spent alone, trying to make sense of a life where Hayato hated him and he had nothing left. 

And now Hayato doesn’t hate him, but Ryu wonders, sometimes, if Hayato hates himself. 

“I can take care of myself,” Hayato says, and Ryu feels anger pool in his belly, and Hayato doesn’t understand.

“Let me,” Ryu says. “Let me.”

“No,” Hayato says. “I won’t.” And then he leans down and catches Ryu’s mouth with his own, licking his way inside with determination, and Hayato’s fine. A bit battered, but fine, and Ryu frees his hands and wraps them around Hayato’s solid back. 

“I’m angry,” Ryu says, but he can’t muster enough conviction, and Hayato laughs and smiles smugly against the skin of his cheek, and Ryu’s so warm.

“It’s just a job,” Hayato says. “It’s not a lifestyle. Not anymore.”

“Okay,” Ryu says, and he chooses to believe.

**

“Holy shit,” Uchiyama says. “Your face.”

“Ruggedly handsome?” Ryu ventures, and Uchiyama shakes his head.

“Ground beef,” he replies, and Shiratori gasps when she catches sight of the bruises. 

“Odagiri- _sensei_!” she cries out, and it catches the vice-principal’s attention. 

“What happened, _sensei_?” he asks, concerned.

“I was mugged,” Ryu lies with a straight face. Even if Ryu hadn’t been able to manage it, it’s unlikely, he thinks, that any expression he had let slip would have been distinguishable. His nose hasn’t been broken, though, and the bruises look a whole lot better than they’d looked yesterday as Ryu had pressed two packages of frozen vegetables to each side of his face to forestall some of the swelling. 

“Oh dear,” the vice principal says, his expression becoming pitying. “Such dangerous times we live in.”

“Indeed,” Ryu replies, and Uchiyama watches the exchange incredulously. When the vice-principal returns to his desk, Uchiyama sits on the edge of Ryu’s and lifts Ryu’s face.

“How do the other guys look?” he asks, in a low tone, and Ryu smiles, even though it hurts, pulling at the split skin of his lip and bruised cheeks.

“Much worse,” he replies, and then he forces his sore, battered body to stand, gathering his basket of materials and his jacket. “Let’s just say that they won’t be coercing my students to join their gang anytime soon. What’s left of it, anyway.”

“Nice,” Uchiyama says, and it’s accompanied by a low whistle as Ryu walks out the door, disguising the slight limp with bravado.

His students gasp as one when he appears, but Ryu’s glare is enough to silence them, and it’s the easiest Geometry lesson he’s ever taught, not even his rowdiest students standing from their seats. Ryu wonders if he should show up battered from fights more often if it makes his students behave.

After class, Kamiyama lingers. “Odagiri- _sensei_ ,” he says, and Ryu stares at him. Kamiyama’s bruises have almost faded away to nothing, and he’s taken his arm out of the sling, though he still holds it stiffly. “I heard…”

“What did you hear?” Ryu asks mildly, but there’s a bit of a warning laced with the words. Ryu can’t have his students gossiping about the fight, because if it gets to teachers that aren’t Uchiyama, Ryu could lose his job.

Ryu doesn’t want that.

“That those guys… Shinazaki’s guys, down at the docks…” he continues, catching his lower lip between his teeth. He hesitates, then barrels on. “I heard they all got arrested.”

“Did you?” Ryu says, and Kamiyama nods, turning to look out the window.

“Rumor has it they were found by the police, all beaten up. The small business owners down there all identified them as local criminals, and the police recognized Shinazaki.”

“Really?” Ryu asks, and he taps his fingers on the edge of the desk in a random pattern. “That’s interesting.”

“I hear he’s going away for a long time,” Kamiyama says. “I guess he won’t be able to… I guess it’s safe to walk home by myself again.” He awkwardly scratches at the back of his neck with his good arm. “I mean, I hear the other guys all got into a lot of trouble too. Lots of repeat offenders.”

“Guys in gangs usually are,” Ryu agrees. Kamiyama finally meets Ryu’s eyes, and he swallows as he takes in the bruises along Ryu’s face and neck, where he hasn’t bothered to do up the top two buttons of his dress shirt. “Anything else, Kamiyama?” Ryu’s voice isn’t harsh.

“Yeah,” Kamiyama says, and with his bad arm he clasps the flap of his bag and flips it back, while his other hand roots inside. He emerges with a handful of folded in half papers. “Homework.” 

“Homework?” Ryu asks, confused. “We didn’t have any last night…”

“I couldn’t do the work from Spring Break, because of…” he trails off, but his eyes flicker down to his still swollen wrist, and Ryu gets it. “But.”

“Oh,” Ryu says, and it’s a warm feeling of accomplishment and pride that sneaks up on him, and leaves him a bit breathless. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Kamiyama says quietly, gruffly, and for a moment, he sounds… just like Hayato, and Ryu grips the edge of the table and refuses to look up. 

“Go away,” Ryu says, and Kamiyama retreats. He lingers for a moment at the door though, and Ryu looks up to see Kamiyama trying to decide about something.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side, _sensei_ ,” Kamiyama says quickly, with a tiny, cheeky smile, and Ryu can’t help but laugh.

“Don’t you forget it,” he says quietly, and Kamiyama is gone, and Ryu is left with a pile of assignments, and a heart that feels a little lighter than it has in almost two years.

**

It’s never been that Ryu couldn’t survive without Hayato. It’s always been that Hayato made the world brighter, and made Ryu feel like there was a reason he opened his eyes in the morning.

Hayato made Ryu feel like there’s an adventure waiting around every corner, and like maybe they’d face it together.

Now Ryu’s got other reasons to open his eyes.

But it doesn’t always make the days less gloomy, and the echoing emptiness of the evenings aches like a war wound.

Ryu sits by the riverbank, wetness from a late winter rain that lingers on the grass sinking through his slacks, and contemplates the clear water below him.

“Hayato,” he says. “I miss you.”

There’s no answer, but Ryu’s come to expect that.

He stands, and dusts himself off, knowing that his khakis are too wet to be presentable and not caring even a little. He looks down where he’d sat, and there’s no imprint at all.

It’s almost like Ryu was never there, even though in his heart, he still sees the outline of two high school boys lying side by side sharing secrets in the twilight.

**

“I don’t want you to leave,” Hayato growls, tugging on Ryu’s school jacket so that Ryu falls into his chest. “I don’t even know where Canada is.”

“It’s right above America,” Ryu replies, muffled by Hayato’s hair, which has found it’s way into his mouth somehow. “I hear it’s colder than here.”

“You’ll have to start wearing coats,” Hayato says, and Ryu can feel his chest rumble with the words. “Or you’ll get sick and die, and I won’t have anyone’s ass to save.”

“Whatever, I save _your_ ass more than you save mine,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s arms tighten around him.

“I…” Hayato starts, and then he huffs. It’s never been about words between them anyway, so Ryu understands. 

“I’ll miss you too,” Ryu says, and Hayato turns his head to the side, stepping back. 

“I never said that,” and Hayato reaches for Ryu’s jacket again, but this time, he doesn’t grab a fistful of it, he just drags long fingers along the front, snagging one of Ryu’s buttons and snapping the threads that hold it to his jacket. 

It’s his second button. “That’s…” Ryu begins, but Hayato flushes a bit with embarrassment, fingering his metallic prize, and Ryu doesn’t finish his sentence. He just reaches up and closes Hayato’s hand around the button, and smirks. “I’ll let you hang on to it, then.”

”It’s my hostage,” Hayato says, and Ryu snorts, and Hayato shoves him. “Your dad’s a cop, so you know what that means.”

“My dad isn’t just a cop,” Ryu says, crossing his arms. He’s never been good with emotional moments; he might be even worse than Hayato is, really. “And I’ve never really talked to him long enough for him to teach me anything.” Ryu shrugs his shoulders, and wonders if they wear uniforms in Canada. He doesn’t think they do, because no one wears uniforms in university, right? His throat feels dry, and he shoves his hands into his pockets in case they’re shaking as much as he thinks they are. “Hostages are people, anyway.”

“I know that,” Hayato says, and he sucks his lower lip into his mouth. “You get the idea.”

“I do,” Ryu says, and night has fallen. His mother is probably watching the street from the window, waiting for Ryu to appear in front of the gates. Waiting fro Ryu to come home from his last day at Kurogin. “I’m…”

“You’ve gotta go, right?” Hayato says, and he kicks at a loose rock. “Daddy’s waiting by the door with a shotgun?”

“He’s not that invested.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Maybe,” Ryu says, and he pushes one hand through his hair. It feels a little dry. It’s not fluffy like Hayato’s, which survives Hayato’s constant color-treatment somehow. “So this is it.”

“I just want to…” Hayato hesitates, and his hands are still playing with Ryu’s button. “You’re always going to be my best friend.”

“I know,” Ryu says, or tries to say, but then Hayato’s mouth is covering his own. It’s a goodbye kiss, but Ryu won’t let it be that. He doesn’t want it to be that. He wants it to be a ‘see you later’ kiss, because… Hayato is as much a part of his life as breathing, and the memory of those months without him… they still burn and sting like an open wound, raw. “See you later,” Ryu says, when they part for air, and he gasps the words, but he means them.

“Yeah,” Hayato says, and Ryu pretends he can’t see that Hayato’s eyes are a little wet with unshed tears. “Later.” Hayato shakes his head, and there’s so much hairspray that it barely moves, and it makes Ryu laugh a little, despite the fact that this is all a little sad. 

It’s the end of something. 

“I’m holding on to this,” Hayato reminds Ryu suddenly, even as he backs away. The button glints between his index finger and thumb. “So if you want it back you’d better be awesome in Canada so you’re allowed to come back.”

Ryu doesn’t want the button back. It’s Hayato’s anyway, just like Ryu’s heart. 

Hayato offers him a half smile and a jaunty wave. “Bye, Ryu!” 

Ryu’s heart isn’t as heavy as it could be. His lips still tingle. It’s the end of something, but it’s not the end of Hayato and Ryu. They’re connected, Ryu thinks. Like it’s destiny.

“I’ll be back,” Ryu says.

“I’ll be waiting,” Hayato says.

Maybe it’s not the end of anything. Maybe it’s a beginning.

**

“I heard you’re staying at Kurogin another year,” Take says, and Ryu smiles.

“Yes,” he says. “It infuriates my father, but that’s just a bonus.” Ryu stirs his milkshake. Behind him, two boys are fighting over a girl they both want to ask on a date on White Day. Ryu smirks, and remembers fighting with Hayato over who’d received more Valentine’s Day presents in those very same seats. The memory is as bittersweet as Ryu’s favorite kind of chocolate. “I feel like I’m… doing something at Kurogin.”

“Highest graduation rate for 3D since our class,” Take says. “I guess you are.”

“It’s close to Hayato, too,” Ryu says. “So I can keep an eye on him.”

“It is,” Take agrees. “It’s very close. Is there…” 

“Mmm?” Ryu says, taking a sip of his milkshake. It’s still a little cold for milkshakes, but there’s enough heat in the café that Ryu can overlook the chill outside. 

“Has there been anymore news on his condition?”

“He’s still somewhat responsive,” Ryu says. “If you squeeze his hand, sometimes he’ll squeeze back. Taku has been spending at least three afternoons a week there with me.”

“What does that mean?” Take asks, leaning forward a bit, resting his chin on the heel of his palm. “Anything?”

“The doctor says it doesn’t mean anything,” Ryu says. That sometimes patients like Hayato react but it’s not… it’s not indicative that they’ll wake up soon, or ever. But…”

“But?” Take says, and he purses his mouth in thought.

“But Hayato’s a fighter,” Ryu says. “If I think of his coma like it’s Ara High, or something, I think that there’s no way Hayato will back down.” Ryu laughs. “There’s no way Hayato will give up.”

“When you put it like that,” Take says, “I can’t help but agree with you.” He lifts his milkshake glass. “To never giving up,” he says, and Ryu clinks his glass against Take’s raised one.

“To never giving up,” he echoes, and outside, Ryu can see the sunlight, hinting at the beginning of spring.

**

_It’s weird_ Ryu writes to Hayato, sitting in his dorm room, blanket across his lap as he types on his laptop. _But even though we’re far apart, it sill feels like you’re here._ Ryu waits for Hayato’s response. It’s early morning in Japan even if it’s night in Canada, and Hayato takes longer to reply to things if he’s not all the way awake yet.

 _Gay,_ Hayato replies, and then nothing for a few moments, just the scribbling pencil icon that signifies that he’s typing. Ryu imagines him typing and erasing, hand buried in his bedhair as he squints at the screen.

_I’m serious,_ Ryu types. _It’s really like you’re here._

_I am there,_ Hayato’s response finally appears. _I could be dead, and my ghost would still be telling you how dumb you look in a tie._

_I do look very dumb in a tie,_ Ryu replies, and maybe he doesn’t feel so alone, since no matter where he is, Hayato is with him.

Loneliness isn’t a stranger to Ryu, but Hayato makes loneliness estranged.

**

Ryu dreams, sometimes, of Hayato’s fingers sliding slow and devious down his ribs. “I’m here,” Hayato says. “Can you feel me?”

“Yes,” Ryu whispers, and he doesn’t want this to be a dream, because when he wakes, Hayato’s warm coffee colored eyes won’t loom above him like this, monitoring Ryu’s heartbeat gasp by measured gasp.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Ryu says, and Hayato laughs.

“Don’t wake up,” Hayato replies, and Ryu tries his best.

Ryu wants to sleep a hundred years, and spend them all in this moment.

**

Hayato opens his eyes on the first day of spring, like he was just waiting for the turn of the seasons to bloom. It’s after 3rd year graduation, and Ryu has a few weeks off before he’s given a new class of troublemakers to wrestle with.

He spends them with Hayato.

Ryu's half-asleep, cheek pressed into the crumpled hospital sheets, hand linked with Hayato's beneath the cloth-weave blanket, hidden from the curious eyes of passers by. 

Something wakes him, and he's not sure what; it might be the casual shift of Hayato's fingers between his own, or the way the bed moves. It might be that Ryu's heart, as usual, is two steps ahead of his mind, already leaping in his chest like a bird taking flight even as he stumbles toward some semblance of wakefulness.

“Hayato,” he says, and he presses a soft kiss to the corner of Hayato’s mouth, and Hayato… opens his eyes.

"Where?" Hayato asks, and it's barely a voice, more like a whisper, or the echo of words. But Ryu reads his lips, and his memory fills in the way it sounds, like it hasn't been over two years since he's heard it, gruff and mellow and perfectly him.

Like magic.

"You're at the hospital," Ryu said. "Dumbass."

Hayato frowns, and it's silent in the room as Ryu just takes in Hayato's eyes, open for the first time in so long. He looks so very alive, and Ryu feels like he's drinking him in. "What—” he starts, but then a nurse walks by, and she sees Hayato, and she drops her clipboard. 

"Oh my goodness," she says, with rushed breaths. "Oh my goodness." She rushes in and Ryu steps back, dropping Hayato's hand and giving her space to check his pulse, and poke and prod him until Hayato has a full-blown scowl, lower lip in a full pout that Ryu remembers so vividly. 

It feels like time has stopped, or maybe, Ryu thinks, like time has finally started again; it's like Ryu has been existing outside of it all, and everyone else was moving forward while Ryu was waiting, and now, _now_ , Ryu doesn't have to wait anymore, because now it's okay to dive back into life.

A doctor comes, and seeing Hayato's eyes, open and alert, he's almost speechless. "I can't believe it," he keeps saying. "You really didn’t seem like you wanted to wake up."

"I told you," Ryu says, when the doctor pulls him outside to talk to Ryu about all sorts of things he should really be telling Hayato's dad and brother, but Hayato's dad is at work and Taku hasn't answered his cell yet—he probably hasn't noticed the understated text Ryu sent that doesn't really represent all the feelings bouncing around in his chest like giant basketballs, pounding against his ribs in a way that hurts, and in a way that makes Ryu feel alive. "Hayato hates to lose."

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Hayato says, when Ryu walks back into the room.

“You’re here, which means you’re not out there,” Ryu says, and it’s like no time has passed, somehow, and it aches and aches. “So out there, I can talk about you ‘like you’re not here’ all I want.”

“Details,” Hayato says. “Stupid ones.”

“You don’t care about that stuff, anyway,” Ryu says, and he’s a little embarrassed at how his voice cracks. “It was all me being lame.”

“You’re always lame,” Hayato says. “You’ve always been my best friend despite that.”

And there’re nurses hovering, and Ryu wants… all sorts of things, but he doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t want to step back from the bed and let the doctor do all of these routine things to make sure that Hayato’s really okay, like asking him questions about the last second he remembers, or if he knows who Ryu is, or all these other obvious things. He doesn’t want to, but he does, and Ryu feels like, somehow, all the brambles and thorns have parted, and he’s waiting, with bated breath, next to a cradle made of glass.

"I'm surprised you remember me, sleepyhead," Ryu says, in a moment of stillness, when the doctors have left them alone, and there is only Hayato and Ryu. It stings in Ryu's memory, because it makes Ryu remember the first real conversation they ever had, standing in the hallways of their junior high, Ryu's uniform perfectly arranged and Hayato's hands in his pockets, not a school supply to be found. 

"Well, you remember me, don't you?" Hayato replies, and he smiles for the first time, big and wide, and even though Hayato is still trying to take everything in, he never misses one of Ryu's beats. 

"You're pretty hard to forget," Ryu admits, and it's the closest he'll ever come to confessing the way he's been the past two years, almost unwilling to hope that this moment might ever come.

"Got me pretty good, didn't they?" Hayato says. "Those guys."

"Yes," Ryu says. "Looks like your fighting skills weren't up to the task without me."

"They'll suck even more now," Hayato says. "My body feels like jelly."

"Two years is a long time," Ryu says, and he stands up and walks to the other side of the room. "It's a really fucking long time."

"I know," Hayato says. "I wish... It had happened differently."

"I should have tried to," Ryu says quietly, and it feels like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. "I should have known that—”

"How were you supposed to know I'd get jumped like that?" Hayato growls, and his voice cracks. “I didn’t even know, and I was working for those guys.” He reaches a trembling hand toward the styrofoam cup of water on the bedside table, but his shaking hand knocks it to the floor. The plastic lid pops off, and water splatters everywhere, drenching the table and the floor. "Shit."

Ryu walks back to his side and picks up the cup, and he notices he's quivering almost as bad. "I don't know. We've always managed to save each other before. This time I failed."

"Bullshit," Hayato says. "You've had two years without me telling you you're stupid, that's why you're saying all this dumb shit, right?"

"Probably," Ryu says, and his throat is so tight he can barely get the words out. His heart is hammering in his chest, like he's a rabbit, and he disguises the way his eyes feel a little wet by getting a new styrofoam cup from beside the sink, and filling it with fresh water, sticking a straw in it. He returns to Hayato's side, and holds the cup close enough that Hayato can lean forward and drink. "Two years is a really long time."

Hayato, lips still wrapped around the straw, looks up at him through his eyelashes, and Ryu realizes, all over again, how beautiful the other man is, gorgeous even with his matted hair and dry cracked mouth. He leans back after a moment, to take in air, and Ryu sets the cup back on the table.

"Two years _is_ a long time," Hayato says, and he closes his eyes and clenches his hands in the sheets, and his hospital gown slips from his shoulder, baring his clavicle and the top of a scar that Ryu remembers more for how it feels beneath his lips than how it looks. "Did you pass the teacher's exam?"

"Yes," Ryu says, and then he's laughing, and he wonders if it sounds as out of control and hysterical to Hayato as it sounds in his head. "Yes, I did. I teach at Kurogin, Hayato."

"Really?" Hayato says, and Ryu can't believe that he and Hayato are talking about his _job_ right now, because Hayato is awake and responsive for the first time in two years.

And Ryu is still deeply, madly in love with him. 

"Yeah," Ryu says, and Hayato is laughing too. "They're not nearly as awful as we were, in 3D. They're like puppies, really."

"We were the best at being the worst," Hayato says. 

"We were," Ryu agrees.

"What the hell happened to your hair?" Hayato asks. "It looks boring as hell. Did being a teacher suck all the life out of you?" He's teasing, but Ryu notices that Hayato's hands are still holding onto the sheets for dear life, and even though he's laughing, there's something unsure in the set of his mouth. 

"I have something," Ryu says, and he reaches up and grabs the button-necklace through his t-shirt, "that belongs to you."

Hayato tilts his head to the side, and his hair looks awful, grown wild and scraggly, and there's an uneven pattern of hair across his cheeks and above his lip where Taku had shaved him unevenly. "Yeah?"

Ryu reaches around his neck and unclasps the chain, pulling the necklace off. Hayato's eyes go round at the sight of it, and there's something bright in his eyes that makes Ryu feel full of hope. "They found it... When they found you," Ryu says, and Hayato's eyes are fixed on the button that dangles at the end of the chain. "If you still want it."

Hayato swallows, and looks longingly at his water, before he steels his jaw. "Two years, Ryu. Is there... Do you... Like, a girlfriend or..." his knuckles are white, and his lips are pressed so tightly together that they've turned white as well. Ryu studies the vein in his neck, and he almost wants to start laughing again, because he hasn't thought about much beside Hayato in two years, and it's ridiculous that Hayato could possibly think otherwise. 

"Dumbass," Ryu says, and he leans forward and wraps the chain around Hayato's neck, lifting Hayato's sweaty hair from the skin and clasping the chain.

The button gleams in the fluorescent light, and it looks brighter around Hayato's neck, probably because it knows it's back where it belongs. Hayato studies it for a moment as it hangs down heavy on the front of the hospital gown, and then he exhales, slowly. "Yeah," Hayato says. "I guess I am."

Ryu gives into the urge to push Hayato's hair out of his face, and Hayato looks up at him, and for a moment, everything between them is electric.

Time is moving forward, and the second hand is ticking to the beating of their hearts. 

"Your hair is a mess," Ryu murmurs, and Hayato winces. 

"My mother would be disappointed," Hayato says, lifting a heavy arm to finger the overgrown tangled strands with dismay.

"I don't think you need to impress any more girls, anyway," Ryu says optimistically, and he's flying, soaring above the clouds and the atmosphere and the stars too, everything below him like an endless ocean. 

He feels so light.

"You’re just saying that because even when I'm in coma, I get more chocolates than you on Valentine's Day," Hayato says, and if he had the energy, his arms would be crossed. Still, one of his eyebrows is proudly lifted, and Ryu smiles, and everything, right now, is perfect.

"You wish," Ryu says, and he reaches forward and finds Hayato's hand, putting his own atop it. Hayato blinks, twice, and then he turns his hand so his palm is facing up. Ryu relishes the feeling of their palms touching, and Hayato's fingers sliding between his own on their own power. 

"I expect really good chocolate next year," Hayato says, and it's an acknowledgement of what it is between them that Ryu doesn't really need, but it feels good anyway, like warm green tea in December, or like a handmade scarf instead of a store-bought one.

"If you weren't in a hospital bed," Ryu says, and he suspects his voice is too soft, to soppy for them, but this is a special occasion, so he'll let himself get away with it just this once. "I'd punch you in the face for calling me your girlfriend, Yabuki."

"If I weren't in a hospital bed, you wouldn't even have a chance of success, Odagiri- _sensei_ ," Hayato retorts.

They'll fight it out later, Ryu figures. There will be plenty of time for everything, after all.

**

Ryu's dreams, now, are beautiful, like the slow unfurling of petals in the spring, full of hope and magic and Hayato's chocolate eyes, sparking with danger and mischief and blessed _life_.

The kingdom is rejoicing. 

When Ryu's awake, it's just the same, and that's the most beautiful thing of all.

**

Shiratori’s desk is bare, all its contents in three, full-looking boxes beside it.

“It’s been a good run,” she says optimistically, but Ryu can see she’s upset. He pats her awkwardly on the shoulder, and she sniffles a bit. “Don’t be nice to me, I’m trying to get over you.”

“My bad,” Ryu says, and his mouth twitches in a smile. Everything is better now. Brighter. Full of color. 

“Odagiri the lady-killer,” Uchiyama says. “I can’t say I get it.”

Ryu doesn’t get it either, since he’s pretty sure everything he does, nowadays, says taken. “You’ll be all right,” Ryu says. “Over at your new school.”

“I will,” Shiratori says. “One of my new colleagues is an old acquaintance of ours.”

“Oh?” Ryu asks.

“Yamaguchi- _sensei_ ,” Shiratori says, and Uchiyama whistles.

“Yankumi?” Uchiyama grins. “I’m sure she’ll have her hands full, as usual.”

“Yes,” Ryu says. “It seems you’ll be okay, after all.”

Shiratori’s friend arrives, twirling car keys around her finger and grabbing two of the three boxes to put in the trunk. Ryu starts to offer to help, but she glares and he quiets, turning his attention to his next semester class-list in lieu of watching her struggle with the boxes.

“Odagiri- _sensei_?” Shiratori says, catching Ryu’s attention as she takes her last box out to her friend’s car. “You look… happy. Good luck to you.”

“Thanks,” Ryu says, but he doesn’t need luck. He’s already got his happily ever after.

**

“Hey, Ryu?” Hayato asks, warm against Ryu’s side as they watch TV in Ryu’s apartment. It’s small with the both of them here. He'd never thought of it as this small, before, but suddenly space seems tight, and he and Hayato live practically on top of each other. Ryu can't say he minds. It's all they can afford, anyway, because Ryu's a second year teacher, after all, and Hayato doesn’t make much at his job, since he works all night at a bar that caters to foreigners, but they only need him four nights a week. He’s looking for something else to fill the rest of the time, but Hayato’s still searching for his passion. Ryu is willing to live in a small place until he finds it.

His father still isn’t too happy with Ryu’s career-path or his choice in roommates, but Ryu pays his own bills now, and Hayato’s warmth at his side is worth the frank disappointment in his father’s eyes on his rare trips home. Hayato, after all, has always been his real family. 

“Yeah?” Ryu asks, his arm slipping around Hayato to pull Hayato closer into his side. Hayato presses his cheek into Ryu’s chest, then, and his hair, wild and uncombed, tickles at Ryu’s chin. (Because Hayato’s vain, but less a little less vain on Saturday mornings.)

“Do you think…” Hayato pauses, and then grabs at Ryu’s hand, his arm crossing Ryu’s waist to link their fingers together. Ryu looks down at him, but Hayato’s got a blush dusting across his cheeks. It makes Ryu smile. Hayato’s always the same. Ryu likes him that way. “Do you think, if we hadn’t met that day at the park… if we hadn’t wound up at the same middle school… If we hadn’t had any of that... Do you think we still would have found each other?” He’s mumbling, and Ryu can feel the anxiousness leaking out of him into the space between them. Hayato’s other hand, the one not caught with Ryu’s, fingers the button he still keeps on a chain about his neck. 

The guys at the bar, Hayato’s told him, think it’s from a high school crush, because they aren’t Japanese, and don’t realize that only boys give away their second buttons. They think maybe Hayato’s got a secret girlfriend. As Hayato tells him this, face red and mouth in an awkward frown that stretches across his whole face that makes him look like he’s begging to be kissed, Ryu thinks they’re close enough.

Ryu swallows, tongue flicking out to lick at suddenly dry lips. Hayato breathes steadily at his side, and they are tangled together, limbs and hearts wrapped up completely in each other. 

Ryu imagines a world without Hayato, without Kurogin and Yankumi and Takeda and Tsucchi and Hyuuga and all of 3D. A world where he’d lived an average life, and never stood up for anything, and never had to fight, sometimes literally, to find himself. He remembers how cold he'd felt, for two entire years, without Hayato by his side. He wonders what he would do, if he'd never met Hayato at all. Who he'd be. What he would see. If he would still live here. He’s not sure what his life would have been, could have been, among the infinite number of possibilities. 

He can’t imagine any life other than this one, no matter how much he tries. Because Hayato is everything. Hayato’s been everything since the moment their hands clasped for the first time, on a random street, on a cold January day. Hayato’s pants had been too short. He’d had wild, untamable hair. Ryu can remember the cut under his eye.

Hayato sighs, and Ryu’s arm lifts and falls with the motion of Hayato’s chest. Hayato is always moving him, Ryu thinks, because Ryu and Hayato are connected. Their two hearts pulse as one, an endless rhythm of wonder, and Ryu finds completion in every single beat.

“Yes,” Ryu says, because no matter where they are, or what they do, Hayato was destined to be Ryu’s, just as Ryu was destined to be Hayato’s. “No matter what, I think I’d find you. I’d know you were out there, my _heart_ would know you were out there, and I’d find you. I’d never give up.”

“Mmmm,” Hayato says, and shifts himself up, pressing a gentle kiss to Ryu’s jaw. It's the sort of moment their friends will never see. Never know about. “You're totally the girl.” Hayato smiles, and it illuminates the room, as it always does in Ryu’s love-struck eyes. "What a gay response."

Ryu rolls his eyes. "We're cuddling," Ryu says. "Obviously it's gay."

"We're not cuddling, don't call it that," Hayato says, burrowing deeper into Ryu's side. "Anyway, I think so too."

"Think what?" Ryu asks, distracted by the heat that floods his stomach as Hayato's breath tickles his neck.

"That we'd have met, somehow. After all, what were the odds we’d meet anyway?"

"Mm," Ryu says, and he resists the urge to drag his hand up Hayato's thigh.

“Besides, who’d bail you out of trouble?”

Ryu laughs, and squeezes Hayato’s hand where their fingers lie still interlocked. “I wouldn’t _get_ in any trouble,” Ryu says. “I’d be straight-laced and working for the police.” The look in Hayato’s eyes now is like spun sugar, sweet and crystal clear, and Ryu feels his chest clench at how wonderful the world is when he’s looking at it with Hayato, soft and here. “The horror.”

“I… you’re…” Hayato says, and it’s… Well, it’s probably the closest they’ll ever get to a love confession, Ryu thinks, because they’re both too rough around the edges to know how to do it any better. Ryu is pretty sure, though, that it doesn’t get _better_ than this, because Hayato’s lips are like a butterfly, fluttering an undemanding, lazy kiss to the side of Ryu’s neck. “You taste sweet,” Hayato says, tongue peeking out to taste Ryu’s skin. “Like frosting.”

“I think I’ll dye my hair,” Ryu says, but then Hayato is kissing him, and he’s drowning in the wet heat of Hayato’s eager mouth, and he forgets all about his hair, lost instead in the confectionary perfection of Hayato’s lips, and of Hayato’s love.

This is another beginning.

**

  
_”At that moment she awoke, and with her the king and the queen, and all the attendants, and the horses and the dogs, and the pigeons on the roof, and the flies on the walls. The fire stood up and flickered, and then cooking the food. The roast sizzled away. The cook boxed the kitchen boy’s ears. And the maid finished plucking the chicken. Then the prince and Brier-Rose got married, and they lived long and happily until they died.”_

\--Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, _Little Brier Rose_  


**

And sometimes, life is like a fairytale. And maybe Ryu will wake up tomorrow morning, and Hayato will be asleep beside him. And he’ll kiss him on the mouth, and Hayato will wake up.

And maybe some things are endless.


End file.
